World Update: Saudi Arabia carries out 90th execution of the year

Saudi Arabia executed a citizen convicted of murder on Wednesday taking to 90 the number of people the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom has put to death this year.


Mufreh al-Harissi was found guilty of stabbing to death a fellow Saudi during a dispute, the interior ministry said in a statement published by the official SPA news agency.

The sentence was carried out in the southwestern Jazan region.

Most people put to death in Saudi Arabia are beheaded with a sword.

Murder and drug trafficking cases account for the majority of death sentences, but on January 2, 47 people were executed on terrorism charges in a single day.

Human rights group Amnesty International said Saudi Arabia carried out the third highest number of executions in the world last year — at least 158.

That was far behind Pakistan with 326 and Saudi Arabia’s regional rival Iran which executed at least 977 people, said Amnesty, whose figures exclude secretive China.