A Saudi man has been sentenced to death for a second time after being convicted in a retrial of a crime he allegedly committed as a child, his family says.
Abdullah Al-Hwaiti was 14 years old when he was arrested in 2017 on charges of murder and armed robbery.
The Supreme Court overturned his original conviction last year.
Human rights activists said that surveillance camera footage showed that he was not at the scene of the crime, and that he was tortured into signing a false confession.
Abdullah Al-Hweiti was sentenced to death for the first time in 2019, after the Criminal Court in Tabuk Governorate convicted him of shooting dead a policeman while robbing a jewelry store in the town of Daba.
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Five other defendants were also sentenced to 15 years in prison for aiding and abetting the crimes.
The activists said that the six pleaded not guilty, and told the judge that interrogators extracted their "confessions" after torture or threats to use it.
The judge ignored - according to what the activists said - the surveillance camera footage that shows that Al-Hwaiti was not near the jewelers at the time of the crime.
The conviction was upheld by the Tabuk Court of Appeal in January 2021. However, the Supreme Court overturned the verdict in November and ordered a retrial.
Um Abdullah, Al-Hwaiti's mother, wrote on Twitter on Wednesday, saying: "The Tabuk Criminal Court unjustly sentences the minor Abdullah to retribution."
After the Supreme Court overturned the first verdict due to false confessions, today an unfair conviction is issued like last time.
Umm Abdullah appealed to King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to intervene to save her son from "injustice".
The "Reprieve" organization also condemned the ruling, saying that it "makes a mockery of Saudi Arabia's demand to abolish the death penalty for children."
The kingdom, whose judicial system is based on a strict interpretation of Islamic law, said in 2018 that it would apply a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison to juvenile offenders convicted of “ta’zir” crimes, for which specific penalties are left to the judge’s discretion.
However, this does not apply to two categories of crimes whose penalties remain fixed - "qisas" crimes, such as murder, and "hudud" crimes, which are considered a right of God, including the crimes of adultery and apostasy.