Heroin Smuggling: Riyadh beheads 3, including a Pakistani

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia beheaded a Pakistani and two Saudis on Tuesday, bringing to 48 the number of executions  carried out this year. That is more than half of the 87 people executed during all of 2014. Reasons for the surge are unclear but human rights group Amnesty International says Saudi Arabia is “well on track” to far exceed previous annual execution records. Among Tuesday’s cases, Mumtaz Hussein Deen Ahmed, of Pakistan, was executed in Madinah after his conviction for smuggling heroin, the interior ministry said. Najr bin Faraj al Azmi al Otaibi, a Saudi, was put to death in Taif for stoning and caning to death another man, the ministry said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency. Another Saudi, Moeid bin Ali bin Moeid al Saad al Qahtani, was beheaded by the sword in the Eastern Province for gunning down a man.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 18^th, 2015.