U.N.: Troubling rise in Saudi executions
Setting up a mock gallows with a dummy on a rope, about 25 Lebanese human rights activists protest outside the Saudi embassy in Beirut on April 2010 against capital punishment as Lebanon’s envoy to Riyadh said he has yet to be informed of a Saudi decision to behead a Lebanese former TV presenter convicted of sorcery, which was expected to be carried out this week. The United Nations said today that Saudi Arabia saw sharp and troubling rise in executions in 2011.
The number of people executed in Saudi Arabia more than doubled in 2011 compared to 2010, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
said today.
The conservative Saudi government executed 70 people for a wide range of offenses, including beheading one woman for “sorcery." In 2010, 29 people were killed by the state.
U.N. High Commissioner, Rupert Colville, told reporters in Geneva on Friday that Saudi Arabia’s “growing use of the death penalty goes against an international trend for fewer executions,” according to AP. He added that his office also criticizes the frequent use of "inhuman" double amputation for robbery offenses.
According to Amnesty International’s annual Death Sentences and Executions report for 2010, China was the world's leader executor. The United States ranked number four.
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