Defiant Saudi Arabia defends planned execution of 14 Shias

‘Saudi Arabia has defended the death penalties it has handed down to 14 Shia nationals amid criticisms that the defendants were tortured into false confessions and convicted in sham trials.
In a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) on Friday, Mansour al-Qafari, a spokesman for the Saudi Ministry of Justice, claimed that all trials at the so-called Specialized Criminal Court — which sentenced the 14 to death — had met international standards and that the media and human rights observers had had access to the court sessions.
Qafari further claimed that death sentences were only given to those individuals who have committed the most serious crimes in the kingdom.
The 14 men are among a group of 24 people who were all convicted last year of carrying out attacks on police stations in the town of Awamiyah and the city of Seihat, both situated in the Qatif region of the Shia-dominated Eastern Province.’
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