“The death sentence was carried out as a punishment for Mustafa bin Hashem bin Issa Al Darwish, today, in the city of Dammam in the Eastern Province,” the interior ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
Saudi officials had accused Mustafa of taking up arms against the kingdom, threatening national security, forming a terrorist gang to kill Saudi security forces and inciting sedition all of which had been rejected by human rights bodies, which had urged the Riyadh regime to revoke the death sentence.
The death sentence was handed down despite the fact that Mustafa was a 17-year-old teenager at the time of his arrest for taking part in peaceful protests in the Shia-majority Qatif region in 2015.
Human rights organizations and political activists had frequently slammed the Saudi court's ruling, calling for Mustafa’s death sentence to be scrapped.
Fuad Ibraheem, a Saudi political activist opposed to the regime condemned the execution, describing the charges against young Mustafa as fabricated and baseless.