Saudi Beheadings on the Rise Again
Pastor Dale Morgan
Jul 14, 12:28 PM EDT
*Saudi Beheadings on the Rise Again*
By DONNA ABU-NASR
Associated Press Writer
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) -- Rizana Nafeek, a 19-year housemaid from Sri
Lanka, is on death row because the baby in her care died while she was
bottle-feeding him. If her appeal is turned down, she will taken to a
public square to be publicly beheaded.
The Sri Lankan government says it is working for a reprieve, and has
until Monday to file the plea. A last-minute pardon by the infant's
parents could also spare her. But if her execution goes ahead, it will
be the latest in a surge of beheadings that could surpass the kingdom's
record of 191 in 2005.
After dropping to 38 last year, the figure for 2007 is already at least
102, including three women, according to Amnesty International.
Beheading has always been the punishment meted out to murderers,
rapists, drug traffickers and armed robbers in Saudi Arabia. Whether
what Nafeek did amounts to murder has never been spelled out by courts
or other officials, but Saudi authorities, facing sustained criticism
from foreign human rights groups, insist they are simply enforcing God's
law.
In February, four Sri Lankan workers were executed for armed robbery and
their headless bodies left on public display in Riyadh, triggering harsh
criticism from international rights groups.
Amnesty International says some defendants are convicted solely on the
basis of confessions obtained under duress, torture or deception.
Speaking of the housemaid's sentence, Kate Allen of Amnesty
International called it "an absolute scandal that Saudi Arabia is
preparing to behead a teenage girl who didn't even have a lawyer at her
trial."
"The Saudi authorities are flouting an international prohibition on the
execution of child offenders by even imposing a death sentence on a
defendant who was reportedly 17 at the time of the alleged crime," she said.
Nafeek arrived in the kingdom on May 4, 2005 to work as a housemaid. She
was given the additional duty of looking after the baby boy, a job the
Sri Lankan Embassy says she was not trained to do. The embassy says the
infant died on May 22 while she was bottle-feeding him.
Nafeek allegedly confessed, according to the statement, but then
recanted, saying her admission was obtained under duress.
The Asian Human Rights Commission, an independent Hong Kong-based body
of jurists and human rights activists, said it was an accident. The
child was choking, it said, and Nafeek "was desperately trying to help
by way of soothing and stroking the chest, face and neck of the baby."
However, it said, "due to misunderstandings this case was presented as
the murder of a baby by strangulation."
An estimated 5.6 million foreign workers, many of them Asian, serve a
Saudi population of 22 million. Of the 102 executed this year, half were
foreigners, including 21 Pakistanis, according to Amnesty International.
"The workers commit big crimes against Saudis," charged Suhaila Hammad
of Saudi Arabia's National Society for Human Rights. She said the number
of executions has risen because crime has increased.
She said prisoners are treated humanely and that beheadings deter crime.
"Allah, our creator, knows best what's good for his people," Hammad told
The Associated Press. "Should we just think of and preserve the rights
of the murderer and not think of the rights of others?"
Beheadings are carried out with a sword, with police holding back
spectators and making sure no one takes photos. Prisoners, usually
sedated, are made to kneel, flanked by clerics and law enforcement
officials and facing the victim's family.
"The prisoner now recites verses from the Quran while a government
official reads the charges and the verdict," according to an account in
Arab News, a Saudi daily. "Halfway through the reading the executioner
suddenly nicks the back of the prisoner's neck with his sword, causing
him to tense and raise his head involuntarily."
Then, in one swift move, the prisoner is decapitated.
Beheadings take place all over Saudi Arabia, usually in a square next to
a mosque.
In a recent interview with Al-Yaum daily, Fahd al-Abdullah, an
executioner in the Eastern Province, called his job "a very ordinary
profession, just like any other profession."
Al-Abdallah, 27, comes from a long line of executioners. As a child he
would watch his grandfather wield the sword, and later was trained for a
year by his uncle.
He said that before a beheading, he urges the victim's family to pardon
the prisoner.
Some families do, just minutes before the blade falls. Others do it
before an execution date is set in exchange for money or in response to
appeals from members of the royal family.
A famous case was that of Samira Murait. In 2000 she shot dead a male
acquaintance who stalked her after she married. After vigorous mediation
efforts and pleas from the public as well as from a Saudi prince, the
family agreed to forgive her. She had spent seven years in prison.
But Nafeek's Saudi employers refused to pardon her, and a court in Ad
Dawadimi, 250 miles west of Riyadh, sentenced her to death on June 16.