'Don't they have mercy?': A mother on losing her son in a record year of Saudi executions
In his four years on death row, Essam al-Shazly’s mother was his only contact with the outside world. During their daily calls she would calm his fears, control her own tears and listen to his hopes of returning home.
Speaking from the family home in Hurghada, a tourist resort on Egypt’s Red Sea coast, she says he would tell her, “Mom, I talk to you because I want to forget what I’m going through. Don’t ask me anything about prison.”
Right up until the end, she thought Shazly, 28, would escape Saudi Arabia’s “horrifying” surge in executions under the rule of the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Last year saw a record 356 people put to death in the country.
“I was always thinking about the day he would come back,” she says. “I was going to take him around in the car and show him all the places he once knew. I was planning to buy a new dress for that day too.”
Shazly had been found in the Red Sea off the west coast of Saudi Arabia near a floating car tyre that officials say contained amphetamine pills, opium and heroin. His mother says he had been thrown into the water by smugglers.
“He thought it was a minor issue and just prison. He called me, crying: ‘Mom, they’ve sentenced me to death.’ He was terrified.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jan/26/death-penalty-saudi-arabia-executions-essam-shazly-human-rights
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