Saudi flag
Saudi flagiStock

Saudi Arabia has executed four people convicted of terrorism in Qatif in the eastern part of the kingdom, Reuters reports, citing a statement by the Interior Ministry released on Tuesday.

The ministry's statement said the four had been convicted of taking up weapons against the government, joined armed groups and attacked a police station and security patrols.

It was not clear whether those executed were Shiite or Sunni Muslims or when the incidents listed had taken place.

Those executed were among more than 20 people on death row in the eastern province, but it was not immediately clear when the death sentences were issued.

Saudi Arabia regularly announces that it has foiled terrorist attacks. In late June, the kingdom said it foiled a terror plot targeting the Grand Mosque in Mecca.

In October, the country’s Interior Ministry said it had arrested at least eight suspected terrorists plotting killings and a car bombing.

A month earlier, Riyadh said it thwarted ISIS-linked terrorist operations that planned to target citizens, scholars, security forces and vital facilities nationwide.

Saudi Arabia has also come under fire for its capital punishment. In January 2016it executed prominent Shiite Muslim cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr and dozens of Al-Qaeda members, in what appeared as an attempt to show it would not tolerate attacks, whether by Sunni jihadists or minority Shiites.

The execution of al-Nimr had sparked protests in the eastern region, where Shiites complain of marginalization and discrimination by the Sunni-led kingdom. Saudi Arabia denies discrimination against Shiites, noted Reuters.

That execution also resulted in Saudi Arabia cutting off diplomatic ties with Iran after protesters ransacked and set fire to the Saudi Embassy in Tehran in protest over the execution of al-Nimr.

In addition to capital punishment, Saudi Arabia is notorious for its violations of human rights and specifically those of women, employing a religious police whose job is to enforce Islamic Sharia law.

Yet despite its violation of human rights, Saudi Arabia in 2013 received a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, being one of several countries with questionable human rights records to win seats in this body.