Saudi Arabia has abolished the flogging of its criminal justice system, a sentence widely criticized as the country's human rights record by international NGOs, said an official and pro-government media.
The ultra-conservative kingdom is regularly accused of human rights violations by NGOs which denounce, among other things, the punishment of flogging applicable in the event of murder, breach of "public order" or even extra-marital relations.
>> READ ALSO - Saudi Arabia: Mecca authorities demand the arrest of a rapper
"The Human Rights Commission welcomes the recent Supreme Court decision to eliminate flogging as a potential punishment," Awad Al-Awad, chairman of the commission, a government agency, said in a statement on Friday evening.
"Prison sentences and fines"
"Under this decision, previous flogging sentences will be replaced by prison terms and fines," he added. "This reform is a significant step forward" in the area of human rights, he said.
The exact date of the decision to abolish the flogging has not been specified. It was not made public but was reported by several local media, including the government newspaper Okaz, citing "senior sources".
According to Okaz, the Supreme Court has imposed on the courts not to apply the flogging sentence "in any case" and to be satisfied with "other sentences", such as imprisonment or fines.
Since Mohammed bin Salman became crown prince in 2017, Saudi Arabia has been singled out for criticism by human rights organizations. The economic and social openness promoted by Prince Mohammed was accompanied by increased repression against discordant voices, within the royal family as well as among intellectuals and activists.
>> READ ALSO - Mohammed ben Salmane, the "versatile and resentful" prince of Saudi Arabia
The memory of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi
His image as a reformer was greatly tarnished by the murder of the Saudi journalist and government critic, Jamal Khashoggi, who was assassinated at his country's consulate in Istanbul in 2018. A crime that caused international outcry.
NGOs on Friday announced the death in prison in Saudi Arabia of stroke, prominent Saudi human rights activist Abdallah al-Hamid, who was serving an 11-year sentence for "breaking allegiance" "to the king," incited disorder "and sought to destabilize state security.
>> READ ALSO - "Even a butcher does not cut meat on the ground": the chilling exchanges of the killers of Khashoggi, according to a recording
The case of Saudi blogger Raif Badawi has been the most emblematic in recent years. Defender of freedom of expression, he was sentenced in 2014 to 1,000 lashes and 10 years in prison for "insulting" Islam.
The death penalty still practiced
Beyond the lashes, the massive use of the death penalty in Saudi Arabia is also denounced by NGOs.
"Saudi Arabia executed a record number of people in 2019, despite a general drop in executions around the world," said Amnesty in its report on the world’s capital punishment, released this week. "The Saudi authorities killed 184 people last year, the highest number Amnesty has ever recorded in a single year in the country," she said.