“Saudi Arabia has beheaded a Syrian drug trafficker, rocketing the number of this year’s executions in the Kingdom to 100. This figure is already more than the 87 sentenced and put to death in the country during the whole of last year,” RT reports.
The execution took place on Monday in the northern region of Jawf. Syrian Ismael al-Tawm smuggled“a large amount of banned amphetamine pills into the kingdom,” the Saudi Interior Ministry said in a statement, as cited by AFP.
“The 100th execution has surpassed the 87 recorded by AFP in 2014, but is still some way below the highest figure of 192, recorded by the human rights group Amnesty International in 1995,” according to RT.
“Almost half of the executions carried out so far this year have been for drug-related offences, which don’t fall into a recognized international category of ‘most serious crimes,’ and the use of the death penalty for such offences violates international law,” Amnesty International reported on its website.
“If it continues at this pace we will have double the number of executions, or more than double the number of executions, that we had last year,” Christof Heyns, told AFP at the end of May.
It’s worth mentioning that today Saudi Arabia has marked another historical event. The country’s stock market, valued at $585 billion, opened up to direct foreign investment for the first time in history, as the kingdom seeks an economic boost amid low global oil prices.
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