Saudi Man Issued New Death Sentence for Crime Committed as Minor

A Saudi Arabian man has been issued a new death sentence for crimes that he committed when he was a minor. The new death sentence handed down on Wednesday by a criminal court comes after a mandatory retrial, ordered after a higher court overturned a previous death sentence. Abdullah al-Huwaiti was arrested at the age of 14 and sentenced to death three years later in 2019 on murder and armed robbery charges, Reuters reported. The country’s Supreme Court overturned the first sentence reportedly over false confessions.

Saudi King Salman in 2020 issued a royal decree that ended capital punishment for juveniles. The decree was announced at the time to apply to retroactively to all cases where an individual was sentenced to death for offenses committed under the age of 18.