Among the 19 criminal cases involving 21 Pakistani individuals documented for this report by Justice Project Pakistan and Human Rights Watch 13 were drug-related cases involving 15 individuals. Authorities charged 11 of these individuals with bringing in drugs at an international airport. Of the eleven individuals, Saudi courts handed three men death sentences, four individuals had prison sentences ranging between fifteen and twenty years, one had a prison sentence of four years, and three remained on trial. According to family members, four of the 11 were forced under threat of violence by drug traffickers in Pakistan to serve as drug mules. The family members stated that courts were not interested in the circumstances under which individuals brought drugs into the country and did not attempt to investigate or appear to consider trafficking claims during sentencing as exculpatory evidence.54 In several cases, detainees and family members alleged that men involved in the recruiting firms that sent Pakistanis to Saudi Arabia forced them to traffic drugs to Saudi Arabia.55 One Pakistani whom Saudi authorities executed on October 18, 2017 based on a heroin smuggling conviction, said by phone from Dammam Prison in December 2015 that a group of men affiliated with the agency through which he obtained his visa entered his Karachi hotel room prior to his departure to Saudi Arabia and forced him to swallow heroin capsules, beating him with guns and threatening to kill him and his family if he did not comply. He said he was too fearful to report this to Pakistani got the feeling [the drug traffickers] might have someone working for them at the airport, too. I was scared that if I informed any authorities about what I was being made to do, the authorities apprehended him in February 2011 convicted him after four court hearings, and he did not dispute a 15-year sentence handed down by a Saudi judge because it was better than the death penalty. Later, however, Justice Project Pakistan interview with Babar, Sargodha, June 17, 2016; Justice Project Pakistan telephone interview with Latif, December 24, 2015; Justice Project Pakistan interview with Aisha, Faisalabad, July 13, 2015; Justice Project Pakistan interview with Amal, Karachi, May 14, 2o16; Justice Project Pakistan telephone interview with Murtaza, June 3, 2016; Justice Project Pakistan interview with Iqbal, September 8, 2016; Justice Project Pakistan interview with Salma, Karachi, September 5, 2016; Justice Project Pakistan interview with Ismail, Gujranwala, September 6, 2016; Justice Project Pakistan interview with Hafiz, Karachi, September 16, 2016. 54 Families mourn drug mules beheaded in Saudi Arabia AFP, December 4, 2014, https://www.dawn.com/news/1148749 (accessed August 30, 2017). 55 27 MARCH 2018