Pakistani convicted of murder gets executed in Saudi Arabia

Riyadh: Saudi authorities executed a Pakistani convicted of killing a Bangladeshi woman on Sunday, raising the execution poll to 79.

“Elias Ismail was found guilty stabbing Hajar Hussein during a robbery and was executed in the Red Sea city of Jeddah” an interior ministry statement carried by the official SPA news agency said.

Most people put to death in Saudi Arabia are beheaded with a sword. The executions so far this year include 47 for “terrorism” carried out in a single day on January 2.

In 2015, Saudi Arabia executed 153 people, most of them for drug trafficking or murder, according to an AFP count.

Human rights group Amnesty International said “The number of executions in Saudi Arabia last year was the highest for two decades”

Saudi Arabia has a strict Islamic legal code under which murder, drug trafficking, armed robbery, rape and apostasy are all punishable by death