Saudi Arabia - the beheading capital of the modern world.

Saudi Arabia - the beheading capital of the modern world.

Saudi Arabia uses public beheading as the punishment for murder, rape, drug trafficking, sodomy and armed robbery, apostasy and certain other offences. 45 men and 2 women were beheaded in 2002 and a further 52 men and 1 woman in 2003.
The condemned of both sexes are given tranquillisers and then taken by police van to a public square or a car park after midday prayers. Their eyes are covered and they are blindfolded. The police clear the square of traffic and a sheet of blue plastic sheet about 16 feet square is laid out on the ground.

Dressed in their own clothes, barefoot, with shackled feet and hands cuffed behind their back, the prisoner is led by a police officer to the centre of the sheet where they are made to kneel facing Mecca. An Interior Ministry official reads out the prisoner's name and crime to
the crowd of witnesses.

A policeman hands the sword to the executioner who raises the gleaming scimitar and often swings it two or three times before approaches the prisoner from behind and jabbing him in the back with the tip of the sword causing the person to raise their head. (see photo)

Normally it takes just one swing of the sword to sever the head, often sending it flying some two or three feet. Paramedics bring the head to a doctor, who uses a gloved hand to stop the fountain of blood spurting from the neck. The doctor sews the head back on, and the body is wrapped in the blue plastic sheet and taken away in an ambulance. The body is then buried in an unmarked grave in the prison cemetery.
Beheadings of women did not start until the early 1990s, previously they were shot. 33 women have been publicly beheaded up to the end of 2003.

Most executions are carried out in the three major cities of Riyadh, Jeddah and Dahran.
Saudi executioners take great pride in their work and the post tends to be handed down from one generation to the next."

http://www.richard.clark32.btinternet.co.uk/behead.html

* People in the West seem to be horrified by seeing people beheaded and call this a barborous act. The Pres. of the US calls this horrifieng and barbaberic, yet he is close allies with the people that approve and promote beheading as a policy. Before this recent beheading I have never heard the Bush Admin. condemn the practice of beheading by their Saudi Allies, have you?

Why not look at our policies? What states are the "beheading" centers of the USA? The answer Florida, and Texas. Are you seeing a pattern? What about the prison abuses and police brutality in this country? I couldn't agree more that is very barbaric viewed from western eyes, but let's not be hypocritical.

It would be the main method of execution in the US(with stoning of course).

:(

How were things done in this country back in the "Old West". And that only goes back a couple centuries...

"Bejeweled" means with/wearing jewels. "Bespectacled"; with/wearing glasses.

"Deforested" is without forest. So why beheaded, rather than deheaded?

Sorry- a little off topic but I've been curious. Can anyone explain?

but if you're looking for primitiveness, just look for religion and head downtown. No, not all religion sucks, but all major religions have fundamentalists, and fundamentalists pretty much hate reality, pluralism, modernity and just about everything worthwhile.

My main point in posting this was to point out that BushCo's friends are the very people that have this policy. How many people know that the Saudis execute people in this manner? How many times has a beheading of a woman in Saudi Arabia been shown on TV or even discused in any Media, at all? Focus on the crimes that people are beheaded for in Saudi Arabia. Also, Saudi Arabia has one of the worst Human Rights records on the planet. Their Prisoner treatment is horrific but rarely is that made public. Just poinnting out some facts about the friends of BushCo.

the more it seems like Texas.

I don't know what to say about that.

a french noble had his friend time him right after his beheading counting the seconds he continued blinking. he stopped after 5 seconds.

other forms of state capital punishment are not so ... guaranteed and rapid. hanging is very messy, sometimes the neck is not snapped immediately. gas chamber is pretty slow, and some have said agonizing. electric chair does not always work, and often it takes some time, also hear it's very painful. very few things are as 100% assured and as rapid as beheading.

though there is lethal injection. supposedly that's relatively fast and painless. but it's not 5 seconds fast and requires quite a setup that isn't available everywhere.