Saudi Arabia’s Public Prosecutor Saud al-Mojeb issued an order to review the death sentences issued against three convicts who committed crimes while still being minors.
Al-Mojeb’s decision follows a royal decree issued last April.
According to the decree, the 2018 juvenile law is also applicable to persons who received final death sentences before the law was passed.
The order is retroactively applicable, meaning that all individuals who had been previously sentenced to death for crimes committed while they were minors will have their sentence commuted to prison sentences of no more than 10 years.
The law states that if a minor between the age of 15-18 commits a crime punishable by death, the individual should receive prison sentence of no longer than 10 years and he or she should serve time in a juvenile detention facility.
"These referrals mark important progress in faithfully implementing an important reform in the legal system, and in advancing human rights in Saudi Arabia," the Saudi Human Rights Commission (HRC) president Awwad Alawwad said in the statement.
"They demonstrate the critical importance of these reforms not just in changes to the legal code, but in actions."
Al-Mojeb has ordered the revision of the death sentences of Ali al-Nimr, Dawoud al-Marhoon and Abdullah al-Zaher, who were sentenced to death in 2016 for terrorism-related crimes committed before they had reached the age of 18.
Both Nimr and Marhoon were 17 when they were detained in 2012. Zaher was 15 when he was arrested in 2011.
It is worth noting that Saudi Arabia has worked on the issuance of more than 70 reform decisions related to human rights during the past five years.
Those decisions included all social groups such as women and workers. They also focused on the development of health and education systems and public services.
Improving human rights is among the most important foundations on which Saudi Vision 2030 centers.
