Saudi Arabia beheads 5 foreigners

Saudi Arabia committed another beheading on May, 6.

Five foreigners were sentenced to death for killing an Indian guard and stealing his money.

Khaled Fetini and Ibrahim Nasserm were Yemeni citizens. Hassan Omar, Salem Idriss, and Abdel Wahhab Abdel Maeen were identified as migrants from Chad, Eritrea and Sudan respectively.

After the execution by beheading, corps of the foreigners were hung from a helicopter. It is intended to deter others from committing such crimes.

The foreigners were executed just a month after Amnesty International condemned the "macabre spike" in state-sanctioned killings. Amnesty's 2014 global report on the death penalty ranked Saudi Arabia among the top five executioners in the world. Saudi Arabia executed 88 in 2014, and after the recent beheading, the figure has touched 80 in 2015.

Amnesty's UK head of policy and government affairs, Allan Hogarth accused the Saudi government of indulging in a "judicial killing spree", describing the number of executions being carried out as "frightening". "There were some tentative hopes of human rights reform when King Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud came to the throne earlier this year, but these have now been completely crushed," he said.

Amnesty's director of Middle East and North Africa programs, Philip Luther added, "The first months of his reign have been marked by an unprecedented wave of executions in a clear signal that the use of the death penalty is thriving in the Kingdom. Any hopes that the arrival of King Salman might herald an improvement in human rights in Saudi Arabia have been crushed".

Shia Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, who is popular with his criticizing the Saudi Arabian government is the next one on the list.

He was accused of "seeking foreign meddling in Saudi Arabia, disobeying its rulers and taking up arms against the security forces".

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