Of all the modern countries Saudi Arabia is
one of the leading in the use of the capital punishment, types of capital
punishments and number of executions. Saudi law allows death penalty for
following crimes: Murder, Adultery, Rape, Sexual misconduct, Apostasy,
Blasphemy, Piracy, Homosexuality, Drug-related crime, Sedition, Prostitution,
Idolatry, Fornication and even the long forgotten Witchcraft. Saudi Arabia is
the only country in the world which still uses beheading (with a sword) as an
official method of execution and what is even worse – the beheadings are
usually public and sometimes the bodies of the executed even were crucified
after the punishment. Also executions by stoning and firing squad, are allowed,
still execution by firing squad is very rare and is usually carried out in
private. As for the solution of this problem the best one is time. While the
countries with the common law tradition have decades of experience, the laws
are constantly changing and there are thousands of cases that are used as
examples for various situations. Saudi Arabia instead is a
relatively young country with very strict laws based on religious traditions,
so it needs time to change their laws according to modern things like human
rights and equality. We also should remember that lots of problems like legal
pursue of homosexual people and women rights were solved in Canada only during the last
century.
One of the recent capital punishment
cases is tied to Canada,
the case of the Kohail Brothers Mohamed (born 1985) and Sultan (born 1991). The
brothers grew up in Saudi Arabia,
but in 2000 their family mover to Canada, where they lived for six
years. They both have Canadian citizenship. In 2006 they moved back to Saudi Arabia
and in 2007 they were involved in a fight at school. After the fight the
brothers were charged with the murder of a 19 year old Syrian boy, Munzer
Hiraki, who died during this controversial fight. During the investigation there
was no information about how exactly the fight went and the trial that followed
is even more controversial.
Their trial took over nine sessions.
The lawyer was allowed only to attend the last one or two and was not even allowed
to challenge the evidence brought against the Kohail brothers. The defense also
brought two witnesses, but the court did not take them into consideration. On
March 3, 2008 Mohamed was sentenced to be executed by public beheading and
Sultan to one year in prison and 200 lashes. Due to huge violation of human
rights Amnesty International made an appeal to Saudi Arabia government. In February 2009 Saudi Supreme Court (in Saudi Arabia
all capital punishments must be approved by this court) rejected the death
sentence and asked the lower court to revise its ruling. Still on April 2 2009,
the lower court rejected this recommendation and reconfirmed the death penalty.
The situation is still unclear at the moment. Mohamed Kohail wrote a letter to
Canadian Prime Minister asking for help, but he got no official support.
