Capital punishment is a legal penalty in theUnited Arab Emirates.
Under Emirati law, multiple crimes carry the death penalty, and the sole method of execution isfiring squad.[1][2][3][4] Current law allows the death penalty fortreason,espionage,murder, successfully inciting thesuicide of a mentally ill person,arson resulting in death, indecentassault resulting in death, nuclear waste disposal in the environment,apostasy,rape of a minor,perjury causing wrongful execution,aggravated robbery,terrorism,drug trafficking[4] and joining theIslamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).[3][2] Overseas nationals and UAE nationals have both been executed for crimes. As of 2025, the last known executions is said to have occurred in February and March 2025.[1]
Since 2020, stoning is no longer a legal method for carrying out executions following an amendment to the Federal Penal Code.[5] Before 2020, stoning was the default method of execution foradultery,[6] and several people were sentenced to death by stoning.[7][8][9][10]
In 1995,Sarah Balabagan, a Filipino migrant worker, killed her employer in his Al Ain house.[11] The case garnered significant media attention in her native Philippines. She was charged with premeditated murder and sentenced to death by firing squad, and maintained that she killed him in self-defence after he tried to rape her. Following a personal appeal of mercy from then-President SheikhZayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, her sentence was reduced and she was required to payblood money instead, which was paid by a Filipino businessman.[11][12]
On 10 February 2011, Rashid Al Rashidi was executed byfiring squad. He was convicted of raping and murdering a four-year-old boy, Moosa Mukhtiar, in the toilets of amosque on 27 November 2009.[13][14]
In June 2015, theFederal Supreme Court sentenced an Emiratiterrorist, Alaa Bader al-Hashemi, to death for themurder of Ibolya Ryan and planting a "handmade bomb" in an Egyptian-American doctor's home in Abu Dhabi. The woman committed the crime in December 2014 and was executed at dawn on 13 July 2015.[15]
On 23 November 2017, Nidal Eisa Abdullah, a man who raped and killed an eight-year-old boy in May 2016, was executed.[16]
On 5 April 2022, an Israeli woman was sentenced to death inAbu Dhabi for drug smuggling.[17] Her sentence was later overturned by an appeals court and commuted to life imprisonment.[18]
On February 15, 2025, Shahzadi Khan, a 33-year-old Indian woman from Uttar Pradesh’s Banda district, was executed. She had been sentenced to death in Abu Dhabi over an allegation of killing a four-month-old child.[19]
