Amanuel wakes each morning not knowing if it will be his last. In Khamis Mushait prison in southwest Saudi Arabia, a knock on the cell door can mean execution without warning. No final call. No last meal.
“I’m a dead man walking,” he says from inside the prison, where CNN obtained his account. “After my friends were executed, I don’t eat food, I don’t drink water.”
Amanuel is a pseudonym. He is one of around 60 Ethiopians in a single cell at Khamis Mushait who have been sentenced to death on drug-related charges, according to human rights groups. More are held in other cells.
Amanuel fled Ethiopia’s Tigray region during the pandemic, in the middle of the country’s civil war. He spent two years stranded in Yemen before crossing into Saudi Arabia. He says he worked as a shepherd for three months. When that job ended, his Saudi employer offered him another: moving goods from place to place.
What followed, he says, was a beating with an electrical cord and kicks. Documents in Arabic were placed in front of him to sign. He could not read them. No lawyer came. No one from the Ethiopian embassy in Riyadh visited him, he says.
Of his three court hearings, only the last had a translator. In that brief session, the judge read the sentence: death. There was no appeal, he was told.
Amanuel is Christian. He says he no longer wears a cross for fear of persecution and was once beaten and left in the sun for three hours. He also says he cannot practice his faith in prison. Four of his cellmates have tried to take their own lives, he says. The others stopped them.
Two weeks ago, five of his cellmates were called out. “First, they called two names, then five more. Then the first two came back. The other five didn’t,” he says.
Saudi Arabia executed 356 people last year, the highest number on record according to NGOs that monitor the kingdom. Of those, 240 were convicted of drug offenses, most of them foreigners. In 2023, monitors recorded only two executions for drug offenses for the entire year.
This year, 71 people have been executed for non-lethal drug crimes so far, with Ethiopians making up the largest group of foreign nationals, according to the same records.
Saudi authorities said in a public statement about one case that those executed “undertook to jointly smuggle hashish into the Kingdom… The ruling became final after appeal and subsequent affirmation by the Supreme Court.” The statement added that “the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is committed to protecting the security of citizens and residents from the scourge of drugs, and to imposing the harshest penalties prescribed by law.”
“Capital trials in Saudi Arabia routinely fail to meet even minimum guarantees of fairness,” said Taha al-Hajji, legal director of the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights. “Defendants are denied legal representation and adequate interpretation, leading to migrants being convicted and sentenced to death without understanding the process – often on the basis of torture ‘confessions.’”
Maya Foa, chief executive of Reprieve, said the cases point to a pattern. “There is a clear pattern of Saudi authorities targeting vulnerable migrants. Often, their true ‘crime’ appears to have been crossing the border, in search of a better life.” also spoke with relatives of three other men on death row in Saudi Arabia on similar charges. All said they learned of the arrests weeks after sentencing, through community contacts, not from officials.
“What I’m praying for, and what I need from the world, is to put positive pressure on the Saudi government to reconsider this decision,” said Selam, a sibling of one of the men, using a pseudonym.
Amanuel’s story mirrors that of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians who migrate each year from the Horn of Africa. The region has been battered by drought and conflict. Many leave to find work in Saudi Arabia.
“This is the largest migration route on the continent in absolute terms,” said Ayla Bonfiglio, head of the Mixed Migration Centre for Eastern and Southern Africa. “We estimate more than 100,000 Ethiopian migrants cross into Saudi Arabia every year.”
The journey runs through Djibouti, then by boat across the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait to Yemen, and finally overland to Saudi Arabia. The UN’s International Organization for Migration calls it one of the busiest and riskiest routes in the world.
Migrants with money pay smugglers to drive at night. Those without walk 200 to 250 kilometers in extreme heat, hoping relatives can send money to pay smugglers in Obock, Yemen.
Families in Tigray told CNN their relatives were held for ransom in Yemen. “He was trapped, and we borrowed money for him to be released. We still haven’t paid the families back yet,” one relative said.
Researchers say that debt pushes many into carrying drugs. “To repay smugglers, migrants are often pressured or coerced into carrying hashish or khat into Saudi Arabia,” said Surafel Getahun, who studies irregular migration from Ethiopia. Khat is legal in much of East Africa but banned in Saudi Arabia. “Migrants aren’t aware it is banned in Saudi Arabia,” Getahun said. “Smugglers take advantage of this.”
Girmachew Adugna, who studies migration from the Horn of Africa, said language barriers and lack of legal aid make Ethiopians especially vulnerable. He called for direct talks between Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia to ensure fair trials
Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia have cooperated on migration before. Between 2017 and 2022, about 500,000 Ethiopians were deported from the kingdom. In 2022, both governments agreed to repatriate more than 100,000 Ethiopians living without legal status.
Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told CNN it maintains “regular communication and constructive engagement” with Saudi authorities and cited 1,971 Ethiopians who have “benefited from royal amnesties.” It did not say if that included anyone sentenced to death for drugs. The ministry also said it would continue using
