Saudi Arabia executed five Ethiopian migrants on 27 July 2026 for drug offences that did not involve a killing, after proceedings that Human Rights Watch says were carried out without due process. Saudi authorities said the executions followed convictions for smuggling hashish.
At least 17 Ethiopian nationals have been executed in the kingdom on drug-related charges since the start of 2026. At least 79 more are at risk of imminent execution on similar charges.
The route that led there
All five men came from Tigray, in northern Ethiopia, a region that went through an armed conflict between 2020 and 2022 and where humanitarian conditions have remained poor since. Rising tensions between the federal government and regional authorities have raised concern that atrocities there could resume.
They left along the eastern migration route, which crosses the Gulf of Aden into Yemen — a corridor used by Ethiopians heading for work in the Gulf states, and one that leaves those on it without legal status or support at either end. A source familiar with their cases said one of the men had been living in Yemen for more than a year with no work and no support services when a Yemeni man offered him and the other four a job in March or April 2023. The same source described all five as physically and psychologically weakened by the journey.
Minutes-long hearings
Human Rights Watch said it had interviewed more than 12 informed sources since April about Ethiopian migrants facing imminent execution for non-lethal drug offences, including two people with direct knowledge of the recent executions. The organisation said hearings in such cases sometimes last only a few minutes and take place without a lawyer or an interpreter present.
At least 116 people have been executed in Saudi Arabia in 2026 up to 27 July, according to the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights.
United Nations human rights bodies hold that drug offences do not meet the threshold of the most serious crimes, the only category for which international law leaves the death penalty available — the standard at issue in nearly every capital drug case of this kind.
This report was produced by the HuMedia newsroom.
