Reports by social media activists from Saudi Arabia indicated that regime forces have surrounded the city of Qatif and threatened mosque and Husseiniyahs in Al-Ahsa and even Medina province that people will be detained if they hold mourning ceremonies or religious gatherings for the victims of Saudi mass execution.
Also, several reports have unveiled that even bodies of the victims have not been returned to families.
The reports also said that funeral events are completely banned by Saudi authorities.
The move came as recently a video went viral on social media that was mistakenly shared by users and media outlets - including the Tasnim News Agency - as the funeral procession of Shiite victims in the city of Qatif who were killed in April 2019, but it was actually an old video from a mass gathering in the Saudi city in 2015 before the kingdom executed 47 people in early 2016 for alleged terrorism-related crimes in what was the largest mass execution carried out by Saudi authorities since 1980.
Saudi Arabia executed 37 people last week, mostly Shiites, in connection with alleged “terrorism” crimes, bringing the number of executions there in the first four months of the year to 105, according to the Saudi interior ministry and Reprieve, a human rights group that tracks the use of the death penalty in the kingdom.
It was the largest mass execution in Saudi Arabia since early 2016, when 47 people were put to death, also on alleged terror-related charges. The vast majority of those executed on Tuesday were members of Saudi Arabia’s Shiite Muslim minority, according to Shiite activists.
Those put to death included at least three people who were minors at the time of their alleged crimes and confessed to prosecutors’ charges under torture, according to Reprieve, which said it provided assistance to five of the people executed.
Shiite communities throughout the world have condemned the savage act by the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and held ceremonies to remember the innocent people who were brutally killed by the regime.