Saudi Arabia government has beheaded five foreigners for murder and robbery, described in diplomatic circle as an unusually high number that has added to what Amnesty International has called a “macabre spike.”
According to the Saudi Arabian interior ministry in a statement today, two Yemenis, a Chadian, an Eritrean and a Sudanese were among those that were put to death in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.
Those who were beheaded were identified as Yemenis Khaled Fetini and Ibrahim Nasser, Hassan Omar from Chad, Eritrean Salem Idriss and Abdel Wahhab Abdel Maeen from Sudan. They were all convicted of killing the Indian guard at a business and stealing money from the safe.
Their beheadings bring to 78 the number of locals and foreigners executed in Saudi Arabia this year, compared with 87 for all of last year, according to AFP tallies. Normally one or two people are executed at a time.
London-based Amnesty ranked Saudi Arabia among the world’s top three executioners of 2014. Drug trafficking, rape, murder, apostasy and armed robbery are all punishable by death under the Gulf nation’s strict version of Islamic sharia law. The interior ministry has cited deterrence as a reason for carrying out the punishment. [myad]
