Official statements released via Saudi Press Agency on Saturday confirmed that Saudi authorities carried out the execution of two Saudi nationals, including Jawad Qureiris, a Shia citizen from the country’s majority-Shia Eastern Province who was first detained when he was between 14 and 15 years old amid the 2011-2012 Arab Spring protest movements. The second individual executed was identified as Fadel bin Hassan bin Abdullah Al-Safwani, another resident of the restive, oil-rich Eastern Province, which has long been a hotspot of anti-government activism and the target of repeated state security crackdowns on its marginalized Shia population.
Qureiris comes from a high-profile local Shia family with a well-documented history of run-ins with Saudi state security forces: one of his brothers was killed during a security operation, while a second sibling was arrested at age 13 and faced potential capital charges over alleged offences he was accused of committing when he was just 9 years old. Qureiris himself was taken into custody in December 2020, with charges tied to alleged participation in anti-government demonstrations and social media organizing activities that date back to when he was a teenager. His family has repeatedly stated that he was subjected to severe, prolonged torture while in detention, forcing him to issue a false self-incriminating statement that was later used to secure his conviction on non-lethal terrorism-related charges.
Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Interior defended the executions in a separate public notice, claiming both men were found guilty of a slate of “terrorist crimes,” including membership in a foreign militant organization, opening fire on security personnel and patrol vehicles using firearms and explosive devices, stockpiling live ammunition, and providing logistical and financial backing for unauthorized militant operations within Saudi territory. The Saudi Press Agency’s official statement added that both cases went through the kingdom’s specialized criminal court system, where legal accountability for the alleged offences was formally established, before the guilty verdicts were reviewed and upheld by the Saudi Supreme Court, and later approved via a formal royal decree.
Human rights advocacy group Reprieve has sharply denounced the executions, noting that since August 2025, Saudi Arabia has put to death a total of five men who were under the age of 18 at the time they were accused of committing their alleged crimes. All five of these recently executed individuals are from Shia households in the Eastern Province, and all were convicted on charges tied to participation in Arab Spring-era and post-2011 anti-government demonstrations. Jeed Basyouni, Reprieve’s Head of Middle East and North Africa Death Penalty Projects, issued a scathing condemnation of the proceedings, stating that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has effectively imposed a de facto death penalty for political dissent, a policy that has now been explicitly extended to minors. Basyouni emphasized that Qureiris, like the four other young men executed in the prior two years, was tortured into issuing a false confession for purported terrorist offences, then went through a closed, opaque legal process that ended with his execution carried out in secret. She further alleged that the Saudi leadership has targeted Qureiris’s family and other dissident households that have publicly challenged the royal family’s authority, using capital punishment as a deliberate tool of political suppression and to settle personal political scores. Basyouni called on Saudi Arabia’s international diplomatic and economic partners to intervene immediately to pressure Riyadh to halt the imminent scheduled execution of another minor defendant, Youssef al Manasif, before it is too late.