‘I’m a dead man walking’: The Ethiopian migrants waiting on Saudi Arabia’s death row
By Muhammad Darwish, Nimi Princewill, CNN
(CNN) — Amanuel wakes up each day not knowing if it will be his last. A rap at his cell door could mean his time is up; no farewell call, no last meal. Executions in Saudi Arabia often arrive without warning.
“I’m a dead man walking,” he says. “After my friends were executed, I don’t eat food, I don’t drink water.”
Amanuel is a pseudonym for one young prisoner who’s been imprisoned for several years. CNN obtained his account from inside Khamis Mushait prison, in the southwest of Saudi Arabia. CNN is not naming him for his own protection.
He is among around 60 Ethiopians sentenced to death on drug-related charges in one cell alone at Khamis Mushait, according to rights groups, with more held in other cells there.
“These are not isolated cases,” said Maya Foa, chief executive of human rights group Reprieve. “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.”
CNN has also heard from relatives of three other men held on death row in Saudi Arabia on similar charges. All said they had learned of the arrests only weeks after sentencing, through word of mouth or community contacts, not from Ethiopian or Saudi 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 to protect their family. “Please, Saudi government, we beg your mercy to my brother and others in a similar situation.”
A total of 356 people were executed in Saudi Arabia last year, the highest number in recent history, according to Saudi records compiled by NGOs. Of those, 240 had been convicted of drug offenses, most of them foreigners. Two years before that, in 2023, the same monitors recorded two such executions in the entire year. The number executed for non-lethal drug crimes this year has reached 71, with Ethiopians representing the biggest number of foreign nationals.
Taha al-Hajji, a Saudi lawyer living overseas who’s the legal director of the European Saudi Organization for Human Rights, outlined serious concerns about due process in the kingdom.
“Capital trials in Saudi Arabia routinely fail to meet even minimum guarantees of fairness,” he said. “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.’
“This is not justice: it is state violence, inflicted on defenseless people.”
CNN reported in November on a similar case in Saudi Arabia’s Tabuk prison, where an Egyptian fisherman was sentenced to death after being detained on drug-smuggling charges.
Khamis Mushait, where Amanuel is held, holds many stories like his, human rights advocates say.
A job that led to death row
Amanuel says he fled Ethiopia’s Tigray region during the pandemic, in the middle of the country’s civil war, and spent two years stranded in Yemen before eventually crossing into Saudi Arabia. He says he worked there as a shepherd for three months.
When that ended, his employer, a Saudi national, offered him something else, a job moving goods from place to place, and Amanuel says he didn’t think much of it. “The men who offered me the work were Saudi. I trusted them.”
A few years ago, while making a delivery, he tells CNN he was arrested after police found hashish in his vehicle.
“We thought just we were carrying some normal things,” he said.
What came next, he says, was a beating with an electrical cord and kicks to his body. Documents in a language he could not read were placed in front of him to sign regardless. He says no lawyer came, nor anyone from the Ethiopian embassy in Riyadh.
Of his three court hearings, only the last had a translator – a brief session in which the judge read out the sentence. There was no appeal, he was told. Amanuel was sentenced to death.
Persecuted for his faith
A Christian, Amanuel no longer wears a cross for fear of persecution and was once beaten for it. “He tied my hands behind my back, beat me, and left me in the sun for three hours.” He says he can no longer practice his faith at all.
Four of his cellmates have attempted to take their own lives, he says. Each time, the others in the cell intervened to save them.
Saudi Arabia has not yet responded to CNN’s request for comment on the foreign prisoners detained in its prisons on drug-related charges, the conditions under which they are held, their access to legal representation and the number executed.
Two weeks ago, five of Amanuel’s cellmates were executed. “First, they called two names, then five more. Then the first two came back. The other five didn’t,” Amanuel says.
In a public statement the Saudi authorities said the individuals “undertook to jointly smuggle hashish into the Kingdom … the investigation resulted in charges being brought against them for committing the crime. They were referred to the competent court … The ruling became final after appeal and subsequent affirmation by the Supreme Court.” The statement added: “(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 against those who smuggle and promote them.”
“(After the execution) a guard crossed the block and spoke to a Saudi prisoner, who signed to us what happened with a finger to his neck. We had to notify the families ourselves,” Amanuel told CNN.
He has not, however, told his mother or his father that he is on death row. “I don’t want the news to be the thing that kills them.” Only distant relatives have some inclination of the severity of his situation, he says, and he’s only asking them for one thing: “Pray for me.”
The road to Saudi Arabia
Amanuel’s story follows a path taken by hundreds of thousands of migrants each year. Most are Ethiopians leaving the Horn of Africa – one of the world’s poorest regions, battered by drought and armed conflict – in search of work in Saudi Arabia. A bilateral labor agreement, a formal deal governing how Ethiopians can legally work in the kingdom, has opened up legal routes for migration, though many still cross irregularly.
“This is the largest migration route on the continent in absolute terms,” said Ayla Bonfiglio, head of the Mixed Migration Centre (MMC) Eastern and Southern Africa. “We estimate more than 100,000 Ethiopian migrants cross into Saudi Arabia every year, and that’s likely an undercount, since most of our data comes from what’s captured in Yemen.”
The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration (IOM) describes the same corridor, running through Djibouti and then by boat across the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait or Gulf of Aden to Yemen, as one of the busiest and riskiest migration routes in the world.
The journey is perilous. “Those with some level of resources to transit Djibouti pay smugglers to move them by car or truck at night,” Bonfiglio said. “Those without have to walk, sometimes 200 to 250 kilometers (124 to 155 miles), in extreme heat, hoping their families can send money to pay smugglers in (the port city of) Obock before they arrive.”
For many, surviving the journey is only the beginning of their ordeal.
The families CNN spoke with in Tigray said their relatives were held for ransom by unknown groups during their journey through Yemen. The abductors forced them to borrow money to secure their release.
“He was trapped, and we borrowed money for him to be released. We still haven’t paid the families back yet,” one relative said.
It’s a debt many migrants never escape, according to Surafel Getahun, who studies irregular migration from Ethiopia. To repay smugglers, he explained, migrants are often pressured or coerced into carrying hashish or khat, a plant-based stimulant, into Saudi Arabia. Khat is legal across much of East Africa but banned in the kingdom, a distinction that smugglers exploit.
“Migrants aren’t aware it (khat) is banned in Saudi Arabia,” Getahun said, adding that “smugglers take advantage of this and make them carry it without explaining the serious risks.” Some are then caught and arrested.
Against this backdrop, Girmachew Adugna, who specializes in migration from Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, questions the use of the death penalty for non-violent drug offenses. Ethiopian migrants are particularly vulnerable, he said, because language barriers, limited access to legal assistance and allegations that some were coerced by traffickers into carrying drugs can undermine their right to a fair trial.
He said direct talks between Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia could help ensure Ethiopian migrants receive a fair trial and legal protection.
The two countries have cooperated on migration before. Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia carried out large-scale returns between 2017 and 2022, with roughly 500,000 Ethiopians deported over that period, according to Bonfiglio.
In 2022, the two governments agreed to repatriate more than 100,000 Ethiopians living in Saudi Arabia without legal status, many of whom had been held in detention centers that rights groups described as overcrowded and abusive. At that time, the IOM estimated that there were 750,000 Ethiopians in Saudi Arabia, of whom about 450,000 had entered irregularly.
For some of those held in Saudi Arabia’s prisons, signs of Ethiopia’s intervention would bring hope, and potentially a difference between life and death.
Amanuel says Ethiopian diplomatic representatives visited the prison last month and promised his case would be reviewed. Despite this, Ethiopia’s government has not publicly challenged Saudi Arabia over the Ethiopians held on drug charges in its prisons.
Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declined to comment to CNN on individual cases, citing the sensitivity of ongoing legal processes. In a written statement, it said it maintains “regular communication and constructive engagement” with Saudi authorities, and cited 1,971 Ethiopian nationals who have “benefited from royal amnesties,” though it did not say whether that included any of the men sentenced to death for drug offenses.
Saudi authorities have not yet responded to CNN’s request for comment.
For now, Amanuel says, all he can do is wait for the knock he knows will come without warning.
“I don’t know exactly when it will happen. It could be tomorrow,” he said. “Every time they knock, I feel it might be my turn.”
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Niguse Desta contributed to this report from northern Ethiopia
