‘I don’t know if I will still be alive tomorrow’: Dozens of Ethiopians ask the world for help from Saudi Arabia’s death row

“I have two minutes left on my phone. I don’t know if I’ll still be alive tomorrow. If we speak again, I’d be so grateful to you.” These are the final words of a conversation between EL PAÍS and Dawit Tesfay — a pseudonym used for security reasons by a 24-year-old Ethiopian man who has been awaiting execution by beheading for the past eight months in the Saudi detention center of Khamis Mushait. Tesfay was sentenced for a drug-related offense after a trial that lasted for just a few minutes, and in which he had neither a lawyer nor an interpreter, according to his account and as documented by human rights organizations in dozens of similar cases.Amnesty International recorded 96 executions in Saudi Arabia between January 1 and June 22, 2026, of which 61 were for drug-related offenses. Of these, 39 were foreign nationals. Meanwhile, between January and August 2026, Human Rights Watch documented that at least 20 Ethiopian citizens had been executed for drug trafficking (the last three on July 31) and that at least another 76 of the same nationality face imminent risk of execution. Every time Tesfay says goodbye after a phone call, neither he nor anyone else knows if he’ll ever be able to get in touch again. The young man also doesn’t know when his turn to die will come. He says there were 68 death row inmates in his wing when he arrived. Today, there are 55 left.In official statements announcing these executions, the Gulf monarchy maintains that they take place only after sentences have gone through various stages of judicial review. However, organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have identified a pattern of serious irregularities: extremely brief proceedings — at times, consisting of a single hearing — the absence of lawyers and interpreters, and in some cases, documents in Arabic that defendants could not understand.Families of the young people who have been impacted, human rights organizations and regional authorities in Tigray, the northern Ethiopian region where most of them come from — are demanding their release and repatriation home, or that they at least be given a fair trial. Haish Subagadis, former head of the Tigray Youth Affairs Bureau, lists the requests made by the families and regional authorities: “We are asking for legal counsel, fair trials, respect for due process, and respect for the rights of migrants. In addition, we are calling for repatriation, release, and a review of the cases, one by one,” he says over the phone.Adam Berhe, another death row inmate with whom EL PAÍS has communicated, speaks of the terror he experiences behind the walls of the Khamis Mushait prison. “They come suddenly, call someone so they come out, and they take them away to decapitate them,” says the 34-year-old from Tigray, who is also being identified by a pseudonym. He has been awaiting his own execution for three years. “Just last week they decapitated eight people in this prison. We live in fear,” he says.Both Berhe and Tesfay were sentenced to death for transporting hashish, which is a banned substance in Saudi Arabia. For years, the regime maintained a de facto moratorium on executions for drug-related crimes, but resumed them in 2022 as part of its policy of cracking down on it and similar criminal offenses. The country has since accelerated the use of capital punishment to record-breaking rates. In 2025, it executed at least 356 people, according to Human Rights Watch, the highest number registered in a single year since modern records have been kept. The previous year also broke the record, with 345 executions.Berhe acknowledges that he knew what he was transporting, and that he agreed to do so because he was in a situation of extreme need, but insists that he did not think the consequences would be so severe. “And now I’m on death row,” he laments. Tesfay, on the other hand, claims he did not know what he was carrying. He had arrived in the Gulf monarchy a few months prior, and was working as a herdsman when he was offered the more lucrative job. “It wasn’t until we were arrested that I heard the word ‘hashish’ for the first time. I didn’t know that’s what I had been carrying,” he repeats several times.Saudi anti-drug policy has had a particularly severe impact on Ethiopians. Dana Ahmed, a Middle East researcher for Amnesty International, noted in a telephone interview that over the past two years, her organization has observed a dramatic increase in the number of Ethiopian nationals sentenced to death and executed. “Our records show that at least 36 Ethiopians were executed in 2025. This year, 20; all for smuggling hashish.”Still, Ahmed rules out the possibility of targeted persecution. “In general, foreign nationals are disproportionately affected by Saudi Arabia’s use of the death penalty, especially for drug-related crimes.” According to her data, between 2015 and 2025, nearly 70% of executions for drug trafficking involved foreign nationals.No lawyer, no trialJoey Shea, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, says that such judicial processes are full of irregularities. Very little information about them has been made public, but cases that are documented show a recurring pattern. “Some defendants appeared in court only three times, for hearings lasting just a few minutes — some of which were even held via videoconference. None of them had legal representation,” she explains.In addition, many of the defendants did not speak Arabic. According to Shea, numerous prisoners were forced to sign documents written in a language they didn’t understand, and that may have included confessions. Later, to file appeals, they had to write letters in Arabic and hand them over to prison officials to be forwarded to judges, and had no way of verifying whether they were actually sent.Tesfay says his trial lasted “two minutes” and that he had neither an interpreter nor legal representation. “At the time, I didn’t even know what a lawyer was,” he says. He was also forced to sign written documents in Arabic he did not understand. “There is no scenario in which it could be said that these men received a fair trial,” says Shea.Amnesty International has collected reports of torture and other abuses. “In some cases, people told the judge that they had been tortured and coerced into confessing; still, that was not taken into account in their final sentence, and they were sentenced to death anyway,” says Ahmed. She adds that, even under Saudi law, a confession obtained under duress should be inadmissible.Escaping warLike Berhe and Tesfay, many of the men who fill the cells of Khamis Mushait’s death row are from Tigray, and came to Saudi Arabia through Yemen after crossing the Gulf of Aden. They were fleeing the war being fought between Ethiopian federal government forces — backed by Eritrean troops — and the separatists of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front between 2020 and 2022.According to Shea, these are particularly vulnerable men who, after months or years of being trapped in Yemen without work, food or other resources, wound up being recruited by drug trafficking networks. “They offer them work without explaining what it is. They simply tell them, ‘Take this package to this place and I will pay you,’ or ‘I will give you food,’” she says.In one of these documented cases, adds Shea, the migrant didn’t even know that they had crossed the Saudi border — they thought that they were still walking through Yemen. “They are utilized to do the most dangerous part of the work, but they are not informed of the role they play within these broader networks,” says the researcher. “In several cases, people were tricked, extorted and forced to transport materials to Saudi Arabia without knowing what they were carrying,” says Ahmed.Berhe did know what he was transporting, but decided to risk it because, he says, he had become desperate in Yemen. Married and the father of a son, he was at the time his family’s primary breadwinner. “The war destroyed my life. I could no longer support my household,” he says in his brief calls with EL PAÍS. The brutality of the conflict Berhe was fleeing was evident in incidents such as the one in Erdi Jeganu, his hometown. There, an Associated Press investigation reported that in 2022, 63 civilians, including 10 children, were killed by Eritrean soldiers.Berhe’s intention was to get to Saudi Arabia, but he ran into daunting challenges. “When people arrived at the border, they shot and killed them,” he remembers. In fact, Human Rights Watch reported in 2023 that Saudi border patrol killed hundreds of Ethiopians who were attempting to cross over from Yemen, and stated that the attacks could constitute crimes against humanity if they were part of state policy.Tesfay also left Tigray in 2020, during the first months of the war. “I was in 11th grade when I left school. We didn’t have anyone to help us, so I was forced to emigrate.” His father, Tesfay Gebreyesus, is still waiting for him at home. The 60-year-old has had an illness for two decades that prevents him from working as much as he did before, and says that though he tried to convince his son not to go, the young man left anyway, determined to do what his father could not: support the family. “If my son has committed a crime, I am ready to compensate the Saudi government, even if I have to beg in the street,” he tells EL PAÍS by telephone from his home in the Gulomikada district in eastern Tigray.A plea to save a lifeInternational organizations have also expressed apprehension over the situation. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which reports to the African Union, stated its “profound concern” and asked for sentences to be reviewed, citing complaints of a lack of “adequate access to legal representation, interpretation services, consular assistance, and other fair trial guarantees.” For its part, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention considers death sentences and executions for drug-related crimes in Saudi Arabia incompatible with international law, and has urged the country to reinstate its moratorium on such executions.The Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs says that it maintains ongoing contact with Saudi Arabia and notes in a July 13 press release that 1,971 Ethiopian citizens have benefited from royal pardons, and that the government has begun facilitating their repatriation. This newspaper contacted the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to obtain its side of the story, but received no response. Nor did it receive a response from the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Saudi Human Rights Commission.Organizations like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and legal action non-profit Reprieve, among others, have called on the Ethiopian and Saudi authorities to guarantee the fundamental rights of citizens sentenced to death. They are also calling on the international community to speak out against the executions and on Saudi Arabia to impose an immediate moratorium on death sentences for drug-related crimes.Human Rights Watch also laments the scarcity of international pressure. “I think that it is a very difficult story to place on the agenda,” says Shea. “Saudi Arabia is a strategic partner for many Western countries, and this does not seem like a politically convenient moment to criticize its human rights record.”In the Khamis Mushait prison, waiting has become a routine. “We pray. I spend the majority of the time sleeping. There’s not much to do here,” says Tesfay. “The life we lead here is extremely hard. We live under very difficult circumstances. The only message I want to share is that you not lose hope for our lives,” the young man implores. Both men repeat this plea during every contact they have with this newspaper. “Life here is very difficult, but I have hope thanks to those on the outside who are trying to help us,” says the 24-year-old.Berhe’s words are directed at governments and citizens, whom he asks to put pressure on the Saudi regime to save his life and the lives of his fellow prisoners. “We are very afraid. Please try to help us as soon as possible. If there is any way to find a solution — whether through a government or a private organization — please file a complaint on our behalf. Help us, come to our aid, and rescue us from this suffering and this extremely difficult situation,” he implored on August 9, in one of his last communications. 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