Riyadh: Saudi Arabia on Wednesday beheaded a Saudi national convicted of murder and a Syrian accused of drug trafficking in the conservative kingdom`s north, the interior ministry announced.
Eid al-Anzi was sentenced to death for killing fellow citizen Yazid al-Anzi during a dispute, the ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency SPA. A Syrian resident, Karim al-Raslan, was also beheaded by the sword "for smuggling 230,000 pills of a forbidden drug into the kingdom," SPA reported.

They were executed in the northern province of Al-Jawf, bringing to 40 the number of people beheaded in Saudi Arabia this year, according to an AFP tally based on official and human rights group reports.

COMMERCIAL BREAK
SCROLL TO CONTINUE READING

In June, London-based watchdog Amnesty International called on Saudi Arabia to stop applying the death penalty, saying there had been a significant rise in the number of executions in the previous six weeks.

It said 15 people were executed in May alone.
In 2009, the number of executions reached 67, compared to 102 in 2008. Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Saudi Arabia`s strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law.

Bureau Report