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Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has quashed the death penalty as punishment for crimes committed by minors, as per the statement by a top official cited in the Associated Press report.
This came along with another decision ordering judges to renounce the practice of flogging and replacing it with incarceration, fines, or community service. The order has brought an end to one of the kingdom’s most controversial and brutal forms of punishment.
According to the report by Associated Press , King Salman's son and heir, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, is the force behind alterations in the law and loosening of restrictions. The majority of the population in Saudi Arabia still adheres to ultraconservative interpretations of Islamic law known as Wahhabism.
The crown prince intends to modernize the country to attract foreign investors and refurbish Saudi Arabia’s image in the world.
The AP report stated that he is also overseen a parallel crackdown on liberals, women's rights activists, writers, moderate clerics, and reformers. The 2018 killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey by agents who worked for the crown prince drew sharp criticism internationally.
The newly brought reforms could save at least six men from the country's minority Shiite community, who reportedly committed crimes under the age of 18. This includes Ali al-Nimr, who had spearheaded some anti-government protests in Saudi Arabia. Protests in Saudi Arabia still tantamount to terrorism-related charges in the kingdom.
In a document accessed by AP , the royal decree orders prosecutors to review cases and drop punishments for those who've already served the maximum 10 years.
However, the kingdom has maintained that it would deal with terrorism-related matters differently in the cases of juveniles. It was not immediately clear whether these cases would be bound by the 10-year prison limit.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have long called on the kingdom to abolish the use of the death penalty, particularly for crimes committed by minors, as per media reports.
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