For a year, Mohamed Saad’s family had no idea whether he was alive or dead. The 28-year-old Egyptian fisherman had gone out on a routine trip off the coast of Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and never returned. Relatives searched for months with no word from authorities. When they finally heard his voice, it was from a prison in Tabuk, northern Saudi Arabia, where Saad said he was being held on drug-smuggling charges.
On October 21 the Saudi state killed him, eight years after being detained. The family learned of his death through a cellmate. The official Saudi news agency said a court had judged him guilty of smuggling amphetamine pills. As of now, Saudi officials still have not notified Saad’s family of his killing, nor told them where he is buried, a person close to the family told CNN.
Saad was one of hundreds of people executed this year in Saudi Arabia, most accused of non-lethal drug crimes, according to a database compiled by the Berlin-based European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR) and Reprieve, which monitors Saudi media and speaks to families.
Many were foreigners: Egyptian, Somali or Ethiopian migrant workers drawn by the kingdom’s
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