RIYADH: Saudi Arabia on Thursday beheaded a convicted Pakistani drug trafficker, adding to what a United Nations rapporteur called a “very disturbing” surge in the kingdom’s use of the death penalty.
Ihsan Amin was executed in Riyadh after being convicted of heroin smuggling, the interior ministry said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.
He became the 90th person put to death this year, compared with 87 for the whole of 2014, according to AFP tallies. About half of those executed have been foreigners. Rights group Amnesty International called the toll unprecedented and said it was “one of the highest recorded by the organisation during the same period for more than three decades”.
“With the year yet to pass its midpoint, the Gulf kingdom has raced towards this shocking toll at an unprecedented rate,” Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa deputy director Said Boumedouha said. “This alarming surge in executions surpasses even the country’s own previous dreadful records.”
