‘Don’t they have mercy?’: A mother on losing her son in a record year of Saudi executions

Essam al-Shazly is the latest foreign national to die in a ‘horrifying’ surge in capital punishment under the rule of Mohammed bin Salman

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n 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.