The executions

Saudi authorities executed five Ethiopian migrants for non-lethal drug-related offences on 27 July 2026, without due process, Human Rights Watch said.[1] Saudi authorities said the executions were for “smuggling hashish”.[1][2] The official statement records the sentences as discretionary death penalties carried out in the Asir region.[3] An Associated Press dispatch carried the same account, citing the rights group’s finding that the hearings lasted only minutes without a translator.[4]

The men

All five men came from Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, where rights abuses and a dire humanitarian situation persist after the 2020-2022 armed conflict.[1] They had been detained for more than three years in the Khamis Mushait detention facility in Asir.[1] One of the men had been living in Yemen for over a year without work when a Yemeni man offered him and the four others a job carrying a package with unknown contents a short distance; the men felt they had to accept despite not knowing what the job was.[1] Saudi soldiers arrested them as they walked by a road, surprising men who had not realised they had crossed the border into Saudi Arabia.[1]

Trials of minutes

The men were forced to sign documents in Arabic, a language they did not understand, and were given only three court sessions lasting between three and twenty minutes, two of them held remotely.[1] A translator provided by the Saudi authorities was present during only two of the sessions, and the men had no legal representation or meaningful opportunity to present a defence.[1][2] At the first session they were told they could submit an appeal letter through the detention centre’s security guards, but because they could not read or write Arabic, at least one relied on a Saudi prisoner to draft it and had no idea whether it ever reached a judge.[1]

A wider pattern

The five were among at least 17 Ethiopian nationals executed on drug charges since the start of 2026, with at least 79 more at imminent risk of execution on similar charges.[1][2] Saudi authorities had executed at least 116 people in 2026 as of 27 July, according to the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights.[1][2]