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DUBAI: Saudi Arabia’s state-backed Human Rights Commission said on Sunday (February 7) that three young Shiite Muslims sentenced to death as minors have had their sentences reduced to 10 years in prison.
Ali Al-Nimr, the nephew of prominent Shiite cleric Nimr al-Nimr, whose execution in 2016 sparked demonstrations in Saudi Arabia and Iran, was 17 years old when he was arrested in February 2012 for participating in protests in the country’s eastern province.
Along with Dawood al-Marhoun and Abdullah al-Zaher, aged 17 and 15 when they were arrested, Nimr was sentenced to death by the Specialized Criminal Court and faced beheading.
Nimr has served more than nine years in jail since his arrest. His sentence was commuted on Sunday, while those of Marhoun and Zaher were commuted in November 2020, the HRC told Reuters.
The time served would apply in all three cases, the HRC said, and they would be released in 2022.
“Freedom soon, God willing,” Nimr’s mother said in a Facebook post celebrating the news.
The government’s Center for International Communications did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move comes more than five months after the Saudi prosecutor ordered a review of the death sentences handed down against the three.
The review followed a royal decree last year that stated that people sentenced to death for crimes committed while they were minors would serve up to 10 years in juvenile detention centers.
However, the decree was never carried out in the state media or published in the official gazette as would be the usual practice.
Western human rights groups and lawmakers had repeatedly raised concerns about its implementation, as Nimr, Marhoun, Zaher and two other juvenile offenders had yet to overturn their death sentences.
One of the five has appealed and eight others originally detained as minors still face charges that could result in execution, human rights groups closely monitoring the cases told Reuters in January.
The HRC reiterated on Sunday that the royal decree would apply retroactively to all cases in which a person was sentenced to death for crimes committed before the age of 18.
The anti-death penalty charity Reprieve welcomed the news, but cautioned that the kingdom must ensure that the decree applies to all juvenile offenders.
“Real change is not about a few high-profile cases; it means making sure no one is ever sentenced to death again for a child ‘crime’ in Saudi Arabia,” said Maya Foa, director of Reprieve.
Although Saudi Arabia executed a record 185 people in 2019, the HRC said in January that it had reduced the number by 85 percent in 2020, noting that it had documented 27 executions.
