Saudi Arabia postponed Raif’s next 50 lashes yesterday, but on Monday they beheaded a woman in public, without anesthetic and taking three blows to do it.
Laila Bint Abdul Muttalib Basim, a Burmese woman who resided in Saudi Arabia, was executed by sword on Monday after being dragged through the street and held down by four police officers.
She was convicted of the sexual abuse and murder of her seven-year-old step-daughter.
A video showed how it took three blows to complete the execution, while the woman screamed “I did not kill. I did not kill.” It has now been removed by YouTube as part of its policy on “shocking and disgusting content”.
There are two ways to behead people according to Mohammed al-Saeedi, a human rights activist: “One way is to inject the prisoner with painkillers to numb the pain and the other is without the painkiller,” he told the Middle East Eye.
“This woman was beheaded without painkillers – they wanted to make the pain more powerful for her.”
So that’s how Saudi Arabia rolls. Not that we do much better here in the US.
In Saudi Arabia a number of crimes, including murder, rape, adultery and armed robbery, can carry a capital sentence.
Beheading is considered one of the more humane punishments the authorities can mete out, a firing squad and stoning are other methods open to judges.
The beheading doesn’t sound so very humane…
She was convicted, but was she guilty? Or was it actually the father or someone else who killed the child and Laila was blamed for it?
It wouldn’t surprise me if many of the convictions of foreign citizens and labourers in Saudi Arabia were falsely convicted of crimes committed by Saudis. Or if self defense were the reasons for someone’s actions as in one case mentioned on wikipedia, and would never be charged with a crime in other countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_workers_in_Saudi_Arabia#Abuse_and_scandals
Not that we do much better here in the US.
We may actually do worse, and I theorize ( http://fabiusmaximus.com/2014/05/01/execution-clayton-lockett-67786 ) that it may be deliberate. The cocktail used in the previous botched Oklahoma death by lethal injection included a sedative, a paralyzing agent, and a chemical that causes the heart to stop beating. Pancuronium bromide (curare) has the medical effect of rendering a patient unable to move while remaining perfectly aware of their surroundings. The sedative is fairly short-acting and can’t kill or render the patient unconscious like what they used to use (Phenobarbitol) So what you might have is a situation in which a patient is sedated and paralyzed but fully conscious while they experience suffocating because they cannot breathe, and then getting to experience a heart attack and – conscious the whole time – their mental dissolution as the brain succumbs to lack of oxygen. This experience might last a minute or two.
Dying of a sword-wound to the neck is certainly going to be unpleasant, no doubt. If the cut severs the main arteries in the neck, the victim would experience a massive drop in blood pressure and fairly quick mental dissolution over a matter of seconds.
The American approach to killing prisoners appears to be intended to produce severe mental anguish in the victim at the time of death, whereas the Saudi approach appears to be intended to produce maximum stress leading up to it. Both are absolutely barbarous and should be condemned in the most uncertain terms.
I wrote: should be condemned in the most uncertain terms.
Teach me to hit “post” when I am literally cross-eyed with rage. 🙁 “unequivocal” was what I should have written.