By Staff Writer
Nairobi – A new CNN investigative report reveals the harsh situation of Ethiopian migrants who are on death row in Saudi Arabia. The report says that dozens of these migrants were convicted for drug-related crimes that don’t involve deadly force. It also says they were tortured, had unfair trials, and did not get proper legal help.
The report focuses on the story of a young Ethiopian man from Tigray named Amanuel.
He used a fake name to keep his identity safe. Amanuel left northern Ethiopia during the pandemic, went through Yemen, and found work as a shepherd in Saudi Arabia. He was arrested for smuggling hashish.
Amanuel told CNN he was beaten during questioning, forced to sign papers he couldn’t understand in Arabic, wasn’t allowed to talk to a lawyer or Ethiopian officials, and got a very short court hearing with poor translation before being given a death sentence.
He said, “I’m a dead man walking.” He mentioned that five other prisoners in his cell were executed without warning. He also said he was scared, kept his death sentence secret from his family back home, and faced religious discrimination as a Christian. The report says several prisoners have tried to take their own lives.
Human rights groups believe around 60 Ethiopian nationals are on death row at Khamis Mushait prison alone for drug-related crimes. There are also others in other prisons facing similar sentences.
The report says Saudi Arabia executed 356 people in 2025, the most in recent years. Of those, 240 were for drug-related crimes, mostly involving foreign nationals. In 2026, 71 people were executed for non-lethal drug crimes by the time the report was published. Ethiopians were the largest group of foreign nationals executed for such crimes, according to the investigation.
Lawyers and rights advocates interviewed for the report say many migrant defendants face big problems. These include not having good legal help, not getting proper translation, and being convicted based on confessions that were probably made under torture. They say migrants who travel through unofficial routes are especially vulnerable to being exploited by traffickers and criminals.
The investigation also highlights the dangerous route Ethiopian migrants take to reach Saudi Arabia. They go through Djibouti and Yemen, where they are often threatened, kidnapped, or forced to transport illegal goods.
According to data from the International Organization for Migration (IOM) released in December 2025, there was a big increase in Ethiopian migrants crossing borders in October 2025.A total of 45,150 movements were recorded at six monitoring points, which is a 26% rise in daily average compared to the previous month.
Ethiopian authorities say they are working with Saudi Arabia to bring back their citizens.In a statement today, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the government “places the highest importance on the welfare, protection, and consular assistance of its citizens abroad.” It added that it continues to focus on humanitarian issues, consular rights, and legal solutions through its embassy in Riyadh and consulate in Jeddah.
The Ministry said that these efforts resulted in 1,971 Ethiopian nationals benefiting from royal pardons granted by Saudi authorities, with the government already helping them return home.
The Ministry described the situation as a reflection of the long-standing cooperation between the two countries on consular and humanitarian matters.It promised to keep using “all available diplomatic and consular channels” to protect the rights and well-being of Ethiopian citizens abroad while continuing to work with Saudi authorities on outstanding cases.
Concerns are growing in Ethiopia about the poor treatment of its migrants and prisoners in Saudi Arabia. Reports of executions, death sentences, and worsening conditions are drawing urgent attention from major religious groups in Ethiopia, who are calling for immediate international and government action to protect the lives of vulnerable citizens abroad.
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This mistreatment of Ethiopian immigrants by the Wahhabis does not come to me as a surprise to me. They have been slaughtering Ethiopians and other Africans for more than 2 millennia. We all know that they were the spear headers of the slave trade predating the Portuguese and Spanish by at least a thousand years. The estimate is that there were 3,000 Africans hauled away by the Wahhabi slave traders off the East African coast every year for at least 1,500 years. That is roughly about 4.5 million human beings taken as slaves to the Arabian Peninsula. On the other side of Africa it is estimated that close to 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World Americas with 2.5 million of them dying during the horrible voyage. Those 10 million slaves who survived the agonizing trip have now descendants numbering more than 140 million living in almost every Island in the Caribbean, North, Central and South America. So what have the Wahhabi slave mongers done to the descendants of those 4.5 million African human beings? Where are my people? This includes Egypt, Iran, Syria and Iraq. You have to live among them taken as one of them to get clues to what they might have done to the defenseless African slaves. Nuff said for me now.