Saudis Behead Three as Obama Visits
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Saudis Behead Three as Obama Visits
A visit by President Obama did not dissuade officials in Saudi Arabia from carrying out three beheadings within hours of Obama’s meeting with new Saudi King Salman.
Obama cut short a visit to India to fly to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to offer his condolences to the Saudis following the Jan. 23 death of Salman’s predecessor King Abdullah, and to meet with the new king.
On that same Tuesday, the Saudis beheaded Yassir bin Hussein al-Hamza, who reportedly confessed to smuggling amphetamine pills into the kingdom.
They also beheaded Omar bin Yahya bin Ibrahim al-Barkati, who was convicted of incest, according to the official Saudi Press Agency.
A third convict, Pakistani Latif Khan Nurzada, was executed for trafficking heroin into the kingdom, AFP reported.
The three beheadings brought to four the number of men beheaded since King Salman assumed the throne on Jan. 23.
The day before Obama’s visit, the Saudis beheaded Moussa al-Zahrani, who had been found guilty of “luring underage girls, intoxicating them, forcing them to watch pornographic videos, and then physically and sexually assaulting them,” an Interior Ministry statement disclosed.
The beheading sparked outrage on social media because the Arabic language teacher and father of six maintained his innocence and claimed he had been framed by police, the Daily Mail reported.
He claimed that one of his accusers, a neighbor, was also a police investigator in the case. His relatives maintained that a medical report showed that the neighbor’s daughter had not been assaulted, and that several cases of assault against young girls were carried out while al-Zahrani was already in jail.
The four recent beheadings brought the total to 16 so far this year, according to AFP. Last year, there were 87 beheadings while King Abdullah, a U.S. ally, was on the throne.
Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery, and drug trafficking are punishable by death in Saudi Arabia.
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