Close Western ally Saudi Arabia has consistently been near the top of the list of countries responsible for executions. And in 2025, it has broken its previous records with the highest number yet.

You wouldn’t know that from Western media coverage, though.

Saudi Arabia’s rising execution figures

In 2024, the Saudi dictatorship executed 338 people. That was the highest ever, until this year.

2025 has seen between 340 and 345 executions, depending on whose statistics you check.

As Nadyeen Abdulaziz from human rights group Alqst told Middle East Eye:

Executions have been carried out after deeply flawed trials, involving confessions extracted under torture, and have even included individuals who were minors at the time of the alleged offences.

The Canary has long reported on the Saudi regime’s countless human rights abuses, links to non-state terrorism, and war crimes abroad. And criticising comedians’ participation in the “world’s largest comedy festival” this year, we noted Human Rights Watch’s concern that:

In 2025, the Saudi government has been on an execution spree to crush peaceful dissent, including speech.

Saudi authorities executed almost one person per day this year, including “peaceful activists and journalists”. But famous Western comedians supported the regime’s whitewashing efforts. Jimmy Carr, for example, said:

I played it. I loved it.

And he added, nauseatingly:

The thing that I like about Saudi Arabia is the direction of travel. Look at where it was 10 years ago. Look at where it is now. The direction of travel is pretty good.

That ‘direction of travel’, just to clarify, is towards a record number of executions.

Any outrage from the West? No?

Type Saudi Arabia into a search engine right now and you won’t see Western media outlets clamouring to report on the regime setting a new execution record.

On one hand, that’s because the dictatorship is one of the top arms importers in the world, and gets most of its weapons from the West. Or the other, it’s because the ultra-conservative regime keeps oil flowing reliably to the West, with preferable conditions, while undermining progressive causes throughout the region.

Saudi Arabia’s ‘direction of travel’ is of great concern. But as Western states have bent over backwards to ignore international law and human rights abuses during Israel’s genocide in Gaza, it’s hardly surprising that they would also pretend not to see what’s going on in Saudi Arabia.

Featured image via the Canary

By Ed Sykes

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