13 March 2023 , 14:31
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Saudi Arabia has executed a dad-of-eight after torturing him into making a fake confession on drug charges.
Jordanian Hussein Abu al-Khair, 57, was a driver for a wealthy Saudi and was arrested by authorities in 2014 for allegedly carrying amphetamine pills across the border from Jordan.
He was later sentenced to death, after a trial criticised by Amnesty International as "grossly unfair".
His sister, Zeinab Abul Al-Khair, previously told the Mirror: "Every moment he's expecting it to be his turn as our whole family is forced to live in fear, sadness, and anxiety."
There are no official accounts of how the execution was carried out, but the brutal state has previously beheaded condemned criminals and firing squads have also been used.
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Hussein Abu al-Khair pictured when he was younger (Zainab el-Khair)Hussein denied the charges and alleged that they had been planted by police.
The European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights also said he was hung up by his feet and beaten into a confession before being sentenced to death in a trial described by Amnesty International as “grossly unfair”.
His execution contravenes a decision by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which last year found that he was being arbitrarily detained and called for his death sentence to be quashed as well as his “immediate and unconditional release”.
British Foreign Office Minister David Rutley told parliament in December that "clearly torture was used" and described the torture as "abhorrent".
However a few weeks later his statement was struck from the parliamentary record under apparent pressure from Saudi.
Former Conservative cabinet minister David Davis, who put forward the urgent question about Mr Abo Al Kheir, told the Telegraph: "A Minister telling Parliament the truth is a good thing, not a mistake.
He was a driver for a wealthy Saudi (Zainab el-Khair)"The mistake is the Foreign Office’s embarrassing effort to rewrite the record. David Rutley was right in what he said, and the Foreign Office should be focused on helping to stop these executions rather than sparing Saudi’s blushes."
The Saudi press agency announced Hussein's execution on Sunday.
It said: "[The regime is] announcing this to confirm the keenness of the Kingdom’s government to combat drugs of all kinds because of the severe harm they cause to the individual and society.
"And to impose the most severe penalties on the perpetrators, deriving its approach from the righteous law of God, and at the same time it warns everyone who does that the legal punishment will be his fate."
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Campaign group Reprieve said there had been 11 executions in Saudi Arabia in the last nine days.
In January the group reported that the kingdom executed at least 147 people last year including a mass execution day on March 12 last year. The report said executions targeted foreigners and drug offenders.