Activists Blast Saudi Arabia Beheadings

The Guardian (UK) ^ | 2-23-2007 | James Calderwood

[blam]

Activists Blast Saudi Arabia Beheadings

Friday February 23, 2007 1:01 AM

By JAMES CALDERWOOD

Associated Press Writer

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - A human rights group said Thursday that Saudi Arabia violated international law when it ordered the beheadings earlier this week of four Sri Lankan robbers and then left their headless bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh.

Human Rights Watch said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights. The group called on Saudi Arabia to halt all pending executions and retry those remaining on death row.

``The execution of these four migrants, who had been badly beaten and locked up for years without access to lawyers, is a travesty of justice,'' Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said in a report.

``International law only allows states to use the death penalty for the most serious crimes and in the most stringent of circumstances - and neither condition was met in this case,'' Whitson said.

Saudi officials did not respond to a request for comment on the Human Rights Watch report.

Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam that calls for people convicted of murder, drug trafficking, rape and armed robbery to be executed in public with a sword. Beheaded bodies are only displayed when there is a specific court order in cases considered particularly offensive.

The four Sri Lankans were convicted of forming a gang that robbed several companies, threatened accountants and workers with weapons and shot one of them and stole his car, said the Saudi Interior Ministry.

Earlier in February, investigators from the New York-based Human Rights Watch had met and spoken to one of the four, Ranjith Silva. According to

[libertarianPA]

As long as you're getting mad at natural behavior, why not protest great white sharks for eating seals?

[GSlob]

"Silva [one of the covicted perps] said [to the visiting human rights watchers that] he and Victor Corea, Sanath Pushpakumara, and Sharmila Sangeeth Kumara, took up armed robberies in early 2004 because their Saudi employer was paying them each only $67 of the $107 a month agreed in their contract - money that barely covered lodgings."
Good riddance to bad garbage. On this occasion I do not find fault with the saudis.

[Graybeard58]

International law only allows states to use the death penalty for the most serious crimes

Who is bound by "international law"?

[amchugh]

Everyone who agrees to be.