His family say he was a fisherman. The Saudis say he smuggled drugs. He was one of hundreds executed this year

By Muhammad Darwish, CNN

(CNN) — 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 economic allure and later trapped in its justice system. In 2024 the kingdom executed 345 people, rights groups say, double the rate of the past few years.

Since becoming its de facto leader in 2017, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, widely known by his initials, MBS, has sought to modernize the kingdom at a breath-taking rate. Seasoned visitors describe the country as almost unrecognizable. He has neutralized the religious police, abolished flogging, allowed women to drive, and will host soccer’s 2034 FIFA World Cup. His country has flown in musicians and sports stars from across the globe and launched world-famous festivals.

It’s all in a bid to attract Western tourists and capital as he embarks on an ambitious economic transformation plan, dubbed Vision 2030.

That plan will be high on his agenda when he travels to Washington DC this week, his first visit in seven years. He will be seeking American commitments to the kingdom’s economy and defense, and a high-profile US-Saudi investment summit is set to take place on November 19.

Few expect human rights to feature prominently when the two meet. But campaigners warn that the PR drive is masking a dark reality back home – and the crown prince’s closeness to Trump is giving him free rein.

Despite MBS saying back in 2018 that the kingdom was working on minimizing executions, Saudi Arabia continues to execute more people than almost any other country on earth, with the exception of Iran and China, observers and rights groups say.

CNN spoke with four sources close to the families of people who have either been executed or are on death row, facilitated by the international nonprofit Reprieve, and the ESOHR, to bring their stories to light. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of retribution against the families.

Some cases belie the images of a modern nation – in one, a Saudi woman and a Yemeni man were executed after being accused of kidnapping babies to practice sorcery.

Rights groups have been sounding the alarm. At the current pace of executions, they say, Saudi Arabia is on track to break its record again this year.

Several foreign nationals remain in the same Tabuk prison where Saad was held. Among them is Essam al-Shazly, a 27-year-old Egyptian fisherman on death row for smuggling amphetamines and 1.8g of a substance “thought to be heroin,” according to legal documents seen by CNN. A person close to the family says he wasn’t aware of what was on the boat when boarding.

“The family had been searching for two months for him. It wasn’t until they received a phone call from him in prison they knew what happened,” the person said.

In a letter to UN special rapporteurs dated in January, the Saudi government rejected allegations of secret executions, unfair trials and the mistreatment of foreign prisoners. It called the claims inaccurate, saying that bodies of those executed are returned to embassies and that official notices are published by the Saudi Press Agency.

Saudi Arabia also said all capital cases pass through three levels of judicial review: trial, appeal and Supreme Court, before being approved by royal decree. It denied allegations of discrimination or torture, saying all prisoners are treated equally and that foreign nationals have consular access and that the death penalty is reserved “for the most serious crimes and in extremely limited circumstances.”

CNN has reached out to the Kingdom’s Ministry of Media for comment.

Human rights groups and sources close to the defendants say prisoners are not always given legal representation and when they are, it rarely changes the outcome of the case.

Accounts from Tabuk prison, relayed to CNN by people close to those incarcerated, describe prisoners on death row waiting each morning to hear if their name will be called, signaling their execution that day.

‘Saudi Arabia thinks it has carte blanche’

Further east, in Dammam, two young Shiite men are on death row: Hassan Zaki al-Faraj and Jawad and Abdullah Qureiris, now in their twenties. Both were arrested and sentenced to death for crimes committed as teenagers during the Arab Spring, rights groups and people close to their families said.

Sources close to al-Faraj’s family say police raided his home in 2017, beat the men inside and detained them. He and his father remain in custody.

The ESOHR says Qureiris was accused of attending a funeral that officials classified as an illegal protest and spent 270 days in solitary confinement upon detention. CNN previously reported that his younger brother, Murtaja, was on death row aged 13 on similar charges and later released.

Critics say the Trump administration has chosen to prioritize trade and weapons sales over human rights. In May, Riyadh and Washington announced a $142 billion arms deal, part of a wider $600 billion commitment for energy, infrastructure and technology development.

Trump also chose Riyadh for the first foreign visit of his first and second terms as president, which preceded the more than $2 trillion in wider Gulf investment pledges to the United States.

Madawi al-Rasheed, a Saudi scholar based in London, told CNN: “Saudi society has been silenced, especially with Trump’s return… Saudi Arabia thinks it has carte blanche.”

The crown prince is “a ruler who believes he can do whatever he wants,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, director of the US-based rights group DAWN. “He enjoys (a) complete lack of accountability.”

“(The executions) are meant to instil fear and show that the consequences for behavior deemed unacceptable by the Saudi government are severe and harsh,” Whitson said.

For prisoners like Hassan al-Faraj, Jawad Qureiris, and Essam al-Shazly, and their families, the painful wait continues. They count the weeks between short phone calls, the months between updates. All dread hearing the worst.

“It is hard to overstate how cruel and how cynical this regime is. It’s a system of lies and brutality,” said Jeed Basyouni, head of Reprieve’s death penalty team for the Middle East and North Africa. “The lies start at the top, with Mohammed bin Salman telling journalists he plans to reduce the use of capital punishment.”

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