RIYADH, Saudi Arabia–Saudi Arabia on Monday beheaded five foreigners for murder and robbery, an unusually high number that adds to what Amnesty International has called a “macabre spike” in the kingdom’s executions.<\/p>\n
Two Yemenis, a Chadian, an Eritrean and a Sudanese were put to death in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency.<\/p>\n
It identified them as Yemenis Khaled Fetini and Ibrahim Nasser, Hassan Omar from Chad, Eritrean Salem Idriss and Abdel Wahhab Abdel Maeen from Sudan.<\/p>\n
They were all convicted of killing the Indian guard at a business and stealing money from the safe.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Normally one or two people are executed at a time.<\/p>\n
London-based Amnesty ranked Saudi Arabia among the world’s top three executioners of 2014.<\/p>\n
Drug trafficking, rape, murder, apostasy and armed robbery are all punishable by death under the Gulf nation’s strict version of Islamic sharia law.<\/p>\n
The interior ministry has cited deterrence as a reason for carrying out the punishment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia–Saudi Arabia on Monday beheaded five foreigners for murder and robbery, an unusually high number that adds to what Amnesty International has called a “macabre spike” in the kingdom’s executions. Two Yemenis, a Chadian, an Eritrean and a Sudanese were put to death in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, the interior ministry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,43],"tags":[5782,89,1595],"byline":[],"source":[],"column":[],"editor":[],"videographer":[],"position":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n