The European Union on Tuesday «deplored» the execution of 20 prisoners in Saudi Arabia during the month of November, in what is a «worrying development» in the use of capital punishment against those convicted of drug-related crimes.
«Regrettably, this worrying development de facto suspends the moratorium on the use of the death penalty for drug-related offenses that was in place since 2021. As a matter of principle, the European Union strongly opposes the death penalty in all circumstances,» European diplomacy criticized in a statement.
In this sense, it has advocated ending this «cruel and inhuman» punishment, noting that «it does not act as a deterrent to crime and represents an unacceptable denial of human dignity and integrity.»
The situation in Saudi Arabia has generated the denunciation of United Nations experts who have called for the abolition of the death penalty for drug offenses. A total of 20 people have been executed in the Arabian Peninsula country since the beginning of November, twelve of them foreign nationals.
