Hawzah News Agency- Rep. Keith Ellison is calling on the federal government to pressure its close ally Saudi Arabia to pardon three young activists who were sentenced to death for attending protests.

Rep. Ellison (D-Minnesota) wrote a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry on April 1. In the letter, Ellison requested Kerry’s “direct intervention to ensure the protection of three juveniles sentenced to death for protesting in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

Ali al-Nimr, Dawood al-Marhoon and Abdullah al-Zaher were arrested for attending peaceful political protests while they were aged 17, 17 and 15, respectively.

The Saudi youths were subsequently tortured, and forced to sign confessions, a common practice in the Saudi criminal justice system. Eventually, all three were sentenced to death. Al-Nimr was sentenced to not just beheading, but also to crucifixion.

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, along with numerous human rights organizations, has criticized the Saudi regime for the death sentences. Saudi is also party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which bans the use of the death penalty for people who committed crimes when younger than age 18.

News reports indicate that Saudi Arabia may execute the young men at any time. Their families are not able to stay in contact with them, and only hear updates on their cases through media reports.

“Many of the individuals sentenced to death alongside Ali, Dawood and Abdullah have already been executed, including a number of juveniles aged between 13 and 17 at the time of their arrest,” Rep. Ellison noted in his letter.

“This includes one of the boys’ co-defendants, Mi al-Ribh, who was just 17 at the time of his arrest,” he continued. “His family was only notified of their son’s execution when the Saudi Ministry of the Interior published the mass execution. To date, they have not been informed where their son is buried, nor have they been permitted to retrieve his body.”