Saudi Arabia on Friday executed eight Bangladeshi migrant workers, sentenced to death for the alleged murder of an Egyptian man, Saudi News Agency reported.
The men were convicted of robbing a warehouse and killing the security guard, Hussein Saeed Mohamed Abdulkhaleq, an Egyptian national.
The agency said that the Bangladeshis were beheaded in public after a verdict issued by a “criminal court, which was supported by the cassation court and the supreme judicial council and approved by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,” the agency quoted from a statement by Saudi Ministry of Interior.
Saudi Arabia, which has avoided mass protests that spread through Arab countries this year, carries out death sentences through public beheading, but it is unusual for 8 people to be put to executed simultaneously.
“They planned the armed robbery and the assault against the guard (Hussein Saeed Mohamed Abdulkhaleq).They tied him until he died,” said the statement.
Three other men “received milder sentences of incarceration and flogging as they were less involved in the crime,” said the statement, adding that they cooperated with the police and “guided the investigators to the whereabouts of the stolen properties and led the police to the hideouts of the masterminding culprits.”
According to unofficial figures by human rights groups, the beheading of the eight Bangladeshi will raise the total number of the executions in Saudi Arabia this year to 58, including 20 non-Saudis. The represents double the number of executions which took place in the country last year.
Around one-third of Saudi Arabia’s population of over 27 million is thought to be foreigners, mainly Asians migrant laborers.
