In 2025, Saudi Arabia broke execution records amid its drug war. What price is paid when justice forgets mercy?
Newsroom (02/01/2026 Gaudium Press ) In 2025, Saudi Arabia executed 356 people, the highest number recorded in its modern history. It was a grim milestone in a year when the kingdom’s “war on drugs” claimed not just the lives of traffickers but, critics say, the nation’s moral promise of reform. Official tallies show that 243 of those executions were tied to drug-related offences. For comparison, the year before saw 338 deaths by state execution—a previous record that had already unsettled human rights advocates.
Authorities have framed the surge as proof of resolve: a campaign to cleanse the kingdom of narcotics and protect public order. But to observers like Duaa Dhainy, of the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights, these record numbers signify something else. They are, she says, “proof that promises regarding human rights reforms in Saudi Arabia have no value”—a message of intimidation “for everyone,” from migrant laborers to political dissidents.
This sharp turn comes after Saudi Arabia resumed executions for drug crimes in 2022, reversing a brief moratorium. In many cases, those now executed were imprisoned years earlier, their cases inching through opaque legal systems before ending in death chambers. Tellingly, the Berlin-based rights group confirmed that more foreigners than Saudi citizens were executed in 2025, underscoring who bears the brunt of Riyadh’s campaign.
The Shadow of the Cross and the Sword
From a moral lens, these executions revive an ancient tension: can justice ever be divorced from mercy? The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the death penalty as inadmissible, calling instead for “means of punishment more in conformity with the dignity of the human person.” Pope Francis, who has reshaped Catholic teaching on the subject, insists that no human being is beyond redemption—even those guilty of severe crimes. By this measure, Saudi Arabia’s march of executions stands as a chilling mirror to what theology might call an “economy of vengeance.”
A Comparison Across Seas
The moral unease evoked by these executions recalls another state-led crusade against drugs: the Philippines’ war on narcotics, launched under former President Rodrigo Duterte. There, thousands of alleged users and dealers were killed in street encounters and police raids between 2016 and 2022, often without trial. The methods differ—extrajudicial killing versus judicial execution—but the logic that underpins them is hauntingly similar: the belief that eradicating evil requires erasing evildoers.
In both cases, authorities justified violence as necessity. In the Philippines, it was framed as a “cleansing of society”; in Saudi Arabia, as the protection of moral and public order. Yet Catholic social teaching holds that the dignity of life cannot be conditional, even on the moral failings of the accused. The contrast between God’s justice—rooted in mercy—and man’s justice—rooted in retribution—grows starker under the fluorescent lights of the execution chamber or the bloodied asphalt of an alleyway.
The Politics of Image and Redemption
Saudi Arabia’s capital punishment record also complicates Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030, an ambitious narrative of modernization and economic diversification. As the country courts global audiences through megaprojects, sports investments, and openness to tourism, critics say its human rights record erodes the credibility of those reforms. Amnesty International, which has tracked Saudi executions since 1990, argues that the kingdom’s actions speak louder than its branding campaigns.
True reform must involve conversion—an inward change that recognizes the sacred in the other. Without it, progress rings hollow. The Philippines, too, found that when blood is spilled in the name of order, the wounds reach deeper than statistics can measure.
Beyond Numbers, Toward Mercy
Saudi officials insist that every defendant’s case passes through due legal process and that the death penalty is reserved for the most serious crimes. Yet the scale—one execution nearly every day of 2025—suggests not justice prudently applied, but justice industrialized.
The question remains whether a society defined by fear and punishment can ever claim peace. In the language of the Gospels, mercy is not weakness but moral strength: the refusal to let despair have the final word. The Church’s teaching does not deny the right of states to ensure order, but it does demand that every act of justice reflect humanity’s deeper vocation—to protect, not extinguish, the image of God in each person.
As the kingdom looks toward a future crowned by global events and economic ambition, its greatest test may not lie in building stadiums or tourist cities, but in learning what it means to replace a culture of death with a culture of mercy.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from UCA News
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