01 April 2019 :

On March 22nd, 2018, the official Saudi reaffirmed its declarations that considered the age of the juvenile is not 18 years, where the media reported that the Shura Council, which is fully appointed by the King, had approved the government’s amendments to the procedures concerning juvenile cases, by amending the age of the statutory punishment of the offense to the age of 15.

A previous relevant declaration in that sense was released on 13 December 2017, when Saudi authorities specified to the UN a loose definition of a child age which contradicts the Conviction on the Rights of the Child. It said that what specify the legal age of an individual are the existence of “sensual and measured signs of maturity that give him the ability to fulfill religious obligations, engage in the financial transactions and to take criminal responsibility”, which is completely contradicted with its previous statements and reports. This is despite Saudi Arabia confirmed its commitment to the age of the child stipulated in the Convention on the Rights of the Child in statements between 2009 and 2017.

ESOHR has documented 8 cases of children that facing death sentence: Ali Al-Nimir, Abdullah Al-Zaher, Dawood Al-Marhoon, Saed Al-Skafi, Abdul Kareem Al-Hawaj, Salman Al-Kuraish, Moujtaba Al-Suwaiket, and Abdullah Al-Sareeh.

(Source: https://www.esohr.org/en/?p=1643)