Yahoo – AFP,
15 June 2015
 |
Saudi
Arabia executed 87 people in 2014, ranking it third in the world for use
of the
death penalty (AFP Photo/Fayez Nureldine)
|
Riyadh
(AFP) - Saudi Arabia on Monday beheaded a Syrian drug trafficker and a national
convicted of murder, taking to 100 the number of executions in the kingdom this
year.
The number
of executions has surged in 2015 compared with the 87 recorded by AFP for all
of last year. But it is still far below the record 192 which rights group
Amnesty International said took place in 1995.
Syrian
Ismael al-Tawm smuggled "a large amount of banned amphetamine pills into
the kingdom", said an interior ministry statement carried by the official
Saudi Press Agency.
He was
beheaded in the northern region of Jawf.
A separate
statement said that Rami al-Khaldi was convicted of stabbing another Saudi to
death and was executed in the western province of Taef.
Drug and
murder convictions account for the bulk of executions in Saudi Arabia.
According
to London-based Amnesty, use of the death penalty for other than the "most
serious crimes" -- premeditated killings -- violates international law.
Saudi
judicial proceedings "fall far short" of global norms of fairness,
according to the rights watchdog.
Under the
Gulf state's strict Islamic sharia legal code, drug trafficking, rape, murder,
armed robbery and apostasy are all punishable by death.
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