Capital punishment in the United Arab Emirates is recorded in this encyclopedia from the source named below.
Overview
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the United Arab Emirates. Emirati law allows the death penalty for: premeditated murder, and for some other forms of culpable homicide; some forms of rape, including of a minor (penetrative child sexual abuse), or disabled person; and particular offences against "state security" in a time of war, or in other special circumstances. Death sentences are infrequently carried out, usually being commuted, albeit to lengthy terms of imprisonment. Both UAE nationals and non-Emiratis have been executed for crimes. As of May 2026, the last known execution occurred in February 2025, with three death sentences carried out that month. These were the first executions to occur since 2021. Executions are carried out by firing squad, the sole legal method. Until 2020, when a new penal code was promulgated, stoning was a possible sentence for hudud offences (those liable to "doctrinal punishments" under sharia), such as adultery or other zina offences. While it has been handed down by courts, the sentence was rare, and often commuted or overturned. No sentences of stoning are known to have ever been carried out in the UAE. The 2020 penal code explicitly excludes imposition of hudud penalties, effectively abolishing stoning as even a theoretical punishment.
Source and reuse
The descriptive text above is drawn from the English-language encyclopedia article Capital punishment in the United Arab Emirates, reused under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence and attributed in the sources block on this page. Figures in the infobox come from Wikidata and carry that project's own provenance; they should be checked against the cited source before being relied on.
Editorial note
This record is a sourced summary, not original research. Where the underlying material is silent on a point, this article is silent too. Last reviewed 2026-09-23.