On the morning of 4 April 2005, six young Somali nationals were taken from their prison cells in Jeddah, western Saudi Arabia, and beheaded in public.
Announcing the executions, the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Interior stated that the six had been convicted of robberies, and that theirexecutions were ordered in October 2004.
The news of the executions shocked the men's relatives in Somalia and Europe. The relatives were under the impression that the six men, who were arrested in 1999, had been sentenced to five-year prison terms and flogging. The relatives had failed to obtain official confirmation of the sentences, and became increasingly anxious when the expected release date had come and gone and there was still no sign of the men. They approached Amnesty International in 2004 but no further information could be obtained until the announcement of the executions.
Amnesty International then learnt that the six prisoners were themselves unaware of the death sentences until the very morning of their executions. The six had escaped war-torn Somalia in search of a better life only to fall victim to Saudi Arabia's relentless use of the death penalty. Their families were unable to recover their bodies for burial.
The case of the six Somalis is only one of many to illustrate the stark horror of the death penalty in Saudi Arabia. Another report has emerged recently
76 Executions in Saudi Arabia This Year.
Saudi Arabia doesn't have the judicial system in place to deal with capital punishment and most of the victims are un-represented and are never actually brought into court. Saudia Arabia practices Sharia Law, which is more than 1,400 years old.
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