Against a backdrop of rising execution rates for foreign nationals in Saudi Arabia, seven Ethiopian death row inmates have risked retaliation to share their harrowing stories directly with the BBC’s Tigrinya language service, smuggled out through a prison phone line to expose the harsh realities of their incarceration and flawed judicial process.
All of the men interviewed are originally from Ethiopia’s Tigray region, where a devastating two-year civil war that ended in 2022 left communities destroyed and economies shattered. Like thousands of other Tigrayans, they fled conflict and poverty, undertaking dangerous cross-border journeys through Djibouti and Yemen in search of work and safety in Saudi Arabia — only to face death sentences for drug-related charges they say they did not fully understand, and were never given a fair chance to challenge.
Habtom, a pseudonym used to protect his identity from retaliation, has spent more than three years on death row in a southern Saudi prison in Khamis Mushait. In a shaky, desperate call made over the hum of shouting cellmates, he described the constant uncertainty that haunts every inmate waiting for execution. “One prisoner cannot comfort another. We have no choice but to cry. We are waiting for our turn, even though we do not know when it will happen,” he said.
He says he was lured into carrying a package by his employers, who promised extra money on top of his low-paid goatherding job. He had no idea what the package contained; he only learned later it was khat, a mild stimulant widely consumed in the Horn of Africa, though Saudi authorities officially list the charges as hashish smuggling. Like most of the inmates interviewed, Habtom says he was denied access to a lawyer, forced to sign an Arabic-language document he could not read, and never got the chance to defend himself in court.
Rights groups say Habtom’s experience is far from unique. Data collected by Amnesty International shows a sharp, alarming rise in executions of Ethiopian nationals in Saudi Arabia: just two were executed in 2023, 35 were put to death in 2025, and 17 have already been executed in the first seven months of 2026 — five of those on a single Monday in 2026. That makes Ethiopians the nationality with the highest number of executions among non-Saudi citizens held in the kingdom.
Dana Ahmed, a researcher with Amnesty International, told the BBC two key factors are likely driving the surge. First, the end of the Tigray war pushed thousands of displaced, desperate migrants to seek refuge and work in Saudi Arabia, increasing the pool of detainees. Second, Saudi Arabia has expanded the use of the death penalty for drug-related offences in recent years. Ahmed added that systemic due process failures are baked into these cases: defendants almost never get access to legal counsel or court documents, translation services (when provided) are inadequate, and the theoretical right to appeal is effectively unobtainable without legal support, meaning death sentences are almost always automatically upheld. “There is a near-total lack of transparency throughout the entire judicial process, from sentencing to Supreme Court review and ratification by the King,” Ahmed said. “People on death row and their families are left in the dark about their fate.”
Nadia Hardman, senior adviser on refugee and migrant rights at Human Rights Watch (HRW), confirmed these accounts, telling the BBC the organization has documented mass trials with no adherence to basic due process, where detainees are sentenced en masse and then left waiting for execution with no information on when their sentence will be carried out.
Saudi authorities have not responded to specific BBC requests for comment on the allegations of unfair judicial processes. The kingdom’s official policy, outlined in public statements released after each execution, maintains all cases follow a clear, formal process: investigation, trial, appeal, Supreme Court review, and final royal decree. Statements add that the death penalty for drug offences reflects the government’s commitment to protecting Saudi citizens from the harm of drug trafficking.
Beyond the injustice of their convictions, inmates described brutal, dehumanizing conditions inside the overcrowded prison. Another inmate, identified only by the pseudonym Desta, said 200 men are crammed into a single cell built to hold just 90. During the day, inmates squeeze together on the floor in sweltering heat; at night, when temperatures drop, they use discarded rubbish bags as blankets because they are not provided with sheets. Guards only open the cell door once a day to drop off food, and inmates who ask questions face severe beatings, he said.
Desta, a former brick-maker who fled Tigray when the civil war reached his hometown, said he was also tricked into carrying a khat package by a smuggler who promised him safe passage across the border from Yemen. When police intercepted the group, the Yemeni smuggler escaped, leaving Desta and the other Ethiopians to face charges. He described the same broken judicial process: forced to sign Arabic paperwork he could not understand, no lawyer, no chance to argue his innocence, and a death sentence handed down after just two court appearances.
For these men, diplomatic intervention so far has produced little tangible change. After 17 Ethiopians were executed in April 2026, there was widespread international outcry: Ethiopia’s influential Orthodox Church Patriarch Abune Mathias called the inmates “voiceless children” living “under the shadow of death” and urged the Ethiopian government to intervene. HRW called on Saudi Arabia to suspend all executions of Ethiopian migrants immediately, and asked Ethiopia to provide urgent consular support.
The issue was raised at a high-level diplomatic meeting between Ethiopian and Saudi foreign ministry officials in Addis Ababa in May 2026, followed by a visit from Ethiopia’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia to the Khamis Mushait prison in June. But inmates told the BBC the visit was rushed, and they did not get enough time to share their cases with the envoy. Within a week of the visit, more executions were carried out. The African Union’s human rights commission has also called on Ethiopia to intervene, but the BBC has not received a response to requests for comment from Ethiopian officials in either Riyadh or Addis Ababa.
In a July 13 statement, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry said it maintains regular contact with Saudi authorities to “pursue appropriate remedies for Ethiopian citizens facing difficult circumstances,” and noted that nearly 2,000 Ethiopian detainees have benefited from royal amnesties to date — though it did not mention death penalty cases specifically.
For the dozens of Ethiopian inmates still waiting on death row, that official progress offers little comfort. Habtom has not even told his family back in Ethiopia he is sentenced to die. “I would rather they be told after I die than now,” he said. His childhood dream of finishing high school, attending college, and supporting his parents was destroyed by the Tigray war, and now he waits each day for the sound of guards opening his cell door to call his name. “We are living in deep fear and cannot even eat the food we are given,” he said. Desta, Habtom and dozens of other death row inmates are now publicly pleading for the international community to intervene to halt their executions.