Saudi Man Beheaded for Murdering Acquaintance

[NNN0LHI]

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAK09J1ATD.html

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) - A man who shot and killed an acquaintance after an argument was beheaded Tuesday in one of two executions in Saudi Arabia, the Interior Ministry said. snip

Tuesday's executions bring to four the number of people to be beheaded in the kingdom this year. Last year, at least 52 people, mostly drug smugglers, were beheaded.

Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam under which people convicted of drug trafficking, murder, rape and armed robbery are executed. Beheadings are carried out with a sword in public.

more

[DrDan]

1. I attended 2 of these

the first was 3 people, and the second was 2

I heard the sentence for the 3 had to do with drug trafficking. Not sure of the second.

These occur around noon on Friday - their holy day in a large plaza.

There are huge crowds, and the rumor was that they force foreigners to to front, but that was not the case. They were much to anxious to get to the front themselves to get a good view. We foreigners were pretty much ignored.

Then a suburban brings in the accused. Both executions were during the summer and the accused got out of the Suburban and walked a ways barefoot - so to do to the intense heat, they must have been pretty drugged up.

The executioner comes out with a huge sword. The accused kneel. And whack.

After several minutes, a doctor comes out to insure they are dead.

In one case, one of the accused was not dead. The executioner deals another blow.

Another wait.

When all are dead, they are loaded onto wooden stretchers, put back into the Suburbans and off they go.

The crowd then surges forward to see the blood on the ground.

For the rest of the day, my thoughts were of the executioner. Did he go home for lunch afterward. Did he play with his children. Did he, well you know, enjoy some intimacies with his wife.

It was quite strange, not thinking of those executed, but of the executioner.h

[NNN0LHI]

4. Interesting post

I think of the executioners too sometimes. Here in the US doctors now do the killing. I wonder if they go right back to treating patients after they kill someone for a fee? Strange world we live in.

Don

[Skittles]

7. doctors do the killing?

wouldn't that be against the oath doctors are required to take?

[LibLabUK]

22. Doctor's don't execute..

The whole "I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel" portion of the Hippocratic Oath prevents them from taking an active role in executions. They can however verify that the victim is deceased.

[DulceDecorum]

26. Have you met the Penta-doctors yet?

The ones who keep telling us that Depleted Uranium is just fine for the troops and even better for civilians?
And what about the ones who are sending unfit servicemen into battle?
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0325-11.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1184960,00.html
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2003/12/13/army_facing_medical_crisis/

[gottaB]

23. makes me think of Mr. Death

http://www.plaidder.com/death.htm

Execution itself is hypocritical, no matter who performs it.

[AngryAmish]

27. Do you mean Dr. Death Steve Williams?

[gottaB]

28. I mean Fred A. Leuchter, Jr.

Leuchter was the subject of an Errol Morris documentary. He was an outspoken holocaust denier, and a proponent of execution by means of electrocution, because he thought it was the humane the thing to do.

To quote the Adder's review:

The film spends about equal time on both phases of Leuchter's career. Each would be disturbing enough in itself; taken together they become a profoundly unsettling and deeply depressing commentary on the consequences of accepting-either as an individual or as a society-the fact of state-sponsored executions. Leuchter does most of the talking in this film, although the cinematography, editing, and interspersed segments of interviews with more credible Holocaust historians testify to an authorial voice which is outside of and antagonistic to Leuchter's; and according to Leuchter, he got into the business of designing and manufacturing execution equipment out of a sincere desire to make the process more humane. Watching him talk about the difficulties involved in making execution safe, humane, and stress-free is instructive on many levels. Leuchter appears to believe in good faith that one can make an execution, if not necessarily pleasant, at least relatively painless. And it is obvious that the only thing that allows him or anyone else to believe this is the machines. The only reason you need a lethal injection machine, as opposed to a doctor with a hypodermic syringe, is so that you can eliminate the factor of individual responsibility; the human presses a button, but it's the machine that kills the victim. Making an execution "humane" may spare the victim some physical anguish, but it also sanitizes what must, no matter how it is done, be a brutal and bloody process. All of the technologies Leuchter designs are attempts, in their own right, at denial: denial of the central and irrefutable fact that there is no way to take a healthy, living, adult human body and turn it into a corpse without mutilating, burning, tearing or poisoning it.

[NNN0LHI]

30. Yes. Doctors doctors are involved in the killing here

http://www.ocadp.org/educate/groner_article.html

<snip>Lethal injection is unique, however, because it mimics a procedure performed thousands of times a day in hospitals across the United States. Furthermore, unlike other methods of execution, participation of healthcare professionals is essential for lethal injection. Medical skills are needed to start intravenous lines, set up intravenous infusion sets, and measure out and administer the appropriate drugs. These tasks must be performed by a medical professional or a "technician" trained by professionals. People on death row are prone to poor vascular access because of scarring from intravenous drug abuse, severe obesity, or poor general health so the advanced skills of doctors are sometimes needed. Georgia requires 2 doctors to witness each execution (and order more drugs if the execution is not successful), but it also hires a 3rd doctor with expertise in vascular access.

Doctors' participation in executions
Several other states have also made doctors integral to the killing process. Three doctors administered the 1st lethal injection in Illinois,7 and the state also enacted legislation (later repealed) that required doctors to be actively involved and that guaranteed anonymity for doctor executioners.8 (Illinois currently has a moratorium on capital punishment.) In Nevada, a doctor examines each condemned prisoner to determine a site for venous access and prescribes the doses of the lethal drugs.9 In several cases, doctors have provided advice about vascular access and, in at least one instance, a surgeon inserted the intravenous catheter into a condemned man after the "execution team" were unable to.10

In Georgia, doctors from the Medical College of Georgia who also care for prison inmates have been involved in lethal injections by pronouncing the inmate dead. The president of the Medical College of Georgia, Daniel Rahn, condemned this practice; in a letter to the prison's warden, Rahn stated that a doctor of the Medical College of Georgia should be forbidden from participating because "even his presence in the death chamber could compromise his relationship with the inmate population."11 Rahn later reversed this decision, however, and he now allows doctors to participate.12 An eyewitness report suggests that doctors in death chambers not only pronounce death but also inspect sites of intravenous access before executions.

[Turley]

6. How could he not be dead?

And where di they aim the 2nd blow, the body or the head?

[DrDan]

8. I have no idea

I know the doctor came out twice and checked his pulse after the initial blow

Then the executioner gave him another

The accused are on their knees, leaning forward, hands tied (or handcuffed behind them)

The blow is to the back of the neck given with a lot of force

I also wondered how anyone could survive one. But perhaps the heart continued to provide a pulse for 5-6 minutes.

[leanings]

9. Chop Chop Square? Riyadh?

Went to one of those myself. They executed one guy for drugs and one for murder.

[DrDan]

10. exactly

Chop Chop square

I never knew that place by any other name

[leanings]

12. You over there for civilian or military?

I was at Eskan Village for four months in 2000.

[DrDan]

13. there from 85-89

where is Eskan village?

[leanings]

15. hmm...trying to remember now....

Northwest of the city, maybe? Eskan was abandoned while you were there. Story went that the King had it built for the Bedou who moved in and then moved out in about two weeks. Huge complex of five room villas and apartment buildings, all walled in and sitting empty. The military took it over during Desert Storm.

[DrDan]

17. We left Feb 89 - just before Desert Storm

I called a good friend of mine the day DS started. He was ex-CIA and a real war-nut - his greatest fear was that peace would break out around the world.

Anyway, he was getting his Christmas pictures done that morning, at the golf-course - in full cammo and gas mask.

He was crazy. But what can you expect from a Princeton alumni - totally useless.

[DrDan]

11. who did you work for there?

What compound did you live on.

I was with AT&T - lived and worked at the compound.

[leanings]

14. Ha-Jinx.

Nah, I was Air Force. We weren't supposed to be down there, but we went anyway. Weird time, Saudi. I only got a chance to leave the base maybe 10-12 times the whole time I was there.

[DrDan]

16. had a lot of AF friends at the ROC compound

as a matter of fact, my wife and I played team tennis for ROC for one year and for the SANG one year ( I think it was SANG - where the Roach Skeller Lounge was located.

I also did quite a bit of work at the Air Base in Riyadh for the U.S.A.F.

[leanings]

18. Ooops.

Eskan is SE of the city.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/eskan-village.htm

USMTM and OPM-SANG both got moved from downtown onto Eskan. I think there was a bombing at USMTM in the mid-90's that prompted the move.

[DrDan]

19. USMTM - that's right

that's who we played temmis for

Great compound - good little lounge

Not much of a tennis team

but it was right downtown, and subject to security problems

but when we were there, security was not an issue

[leanings]

21. OK, I found it.

That compound caught a car bomb in '95. Killed five US and one Saudi. After that they moved all their ops to Eskan.

We had to get in good with those guys if we wanted any chance of wetting our whistles. :)

[BuddyTheDog]

33. You're a disguting specimen too

"Went to one of these too".

Just a bit of entertainment. How can sleep? People like you have been vilified for 2000 years, yet you gladly admit it, as if it were like going to Disneyland. You're scum.

[0007]

24. Is there a trail?

[BuddyTheDog]

31. I attended 2 of these

You are a sick, sick, sick person. Far worse than the Saudis. (I registered just so I could reply on this thread)

[pinniped]

34. Was the executioner hooded?

n/t

[dutchdemocrat]

2. Human Rights Organisations pin American slaughter.

More than 100 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. The USA by contrast has increased its rate of executions and the number of crimes punishable by death. Thirty-eight states currently have the death penalty on their statute books.

More than 350 people have been executed in the USA since 1990. More than 3,300 others are on death row.

The application of the death penalty is racist. Black and white people are the victims of violent crime in roughly equal numbers, yet 82 per cent of people executed since 1977 have been convicted of killing white victims.

Children have not reached a full understanding of their actions. No one should be sentenced to death for a crime they committed before the age of 18. However, in 24 US states people can be sentenced to death for crimes committed when they were children.

In 1989 the US Supreme Court ruled that it was not unconstitutional to execute mentally retarded people. Since then some 30 mentally impaired people have been executed. However, some positive steps have been taken. In 1998 Nebraska became the 12th state to adopt a law banning the execution of mentally retarded prisoners.

Whether someone is sentenced to life or death can depend more on their lawyer than on the crime. A defendant who cannot afford an experienced and competent lawyer is more likely to be sentenced to death than someone who can.

One execution is one too many because, no matter how it's carried out, the death penalty is cruel, inhuman and degrading. It’s an assault on human dignity and a violation of human rights.


http://www.amnestyusa.org/rightsforall/dp/

[bif]

3. Wonderful. Our friends, the Saudis.

n/t

[DrDan]

5. except for these being done in public, what is the difference?

I don't believe in the death penalty, but do believe our right-wing-whacho repug friends would flock to these executions in the same fashion as the Saudis if we made our public.

In some ways, theirs are arguably more humane (if that is possible) than several of our choices for justice.

[demosincebirth]

20. Humane???

You gotta be kiddin'! Its humane if your're a chicken.

[DrDan]

25. from what I could tell

the accused were pretty well drugged up

they were able to walk barefoot on the hot summer Saudi pavement

and I saw 5 of 'em kneel down and stick out their necks - no fighting, fidgeting, squirming - I couldn't do that without a serious drug dose

Have you read description of how well we handle these things in Florida? Smoke coming from the head. The minutes of shaking and convulsing before death.

I think, given a choice, I would take a Saudi sword

[BuddyTheDog]

32. What's the diff?

{I}I don't believe in the death penalty, but do believe our right-wing-whacho repug friends would flock to these executions in the same fashion as the Saudis if we made our public.{/I}

Just like our left-wing-macho democrat friend do. You make me sick.

Didn't you go to watch? Fucking creep.

[BuddyTheDog]

35. DrDan? DrDan?

"I don't believe in the death penalty, but do believe our right-wing-whacho repug friends would flock to these executions in the same fashion as the Saudis if we made our public."

Didn't you "flock to these executions?" You fucking ghoul. You make me sick.How do you live with yourself, let alone call yourself a Democrat?

[maxwall]

29. Our loving peaceful friends the Saudis... n/t