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    Saudi Woman Beheaded for 'Witchcraft'

    A Saudi woman was beheaded after being convicted of practicing "witchcraft and sorcery," according to the Saudi Interior Ministry, at least the second such execution for sorcery this year.

    The woman, Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar, was executed in the northern Saudi province of al-Jawf on Monday.

    A source close to the Saudi religious police told Arab newspaper al Hayat that authorities who searched Nassar's home found a book about witchcraft, 35 veils and glass bottles full of "an unknown liquid used for sorcery" among her possessions. According to reports, authorities said Nassar claimed to be a healer and would sell a veil and three bottles for 1500 riyals, or about $400.

    According to the ministry, Nassar's death sentence was upheld by an appeals court and the Saudi Supreme Judicial Council.

    Philip Luther, the interim direct of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa program, condemned Nassar's killing, calling it "deeply shocking."

    "The charges of 'witchcraft and sorcery' are not defined as crimes in Saudi Arabia and to use them to subject someone to the cruel and extreme penalty of execution is truly appalling," Luther said.

    Luther said that a charge of sorcery is often used by the Saudi government as a smokescreen under which they punish people for exercising freedom of speech.

    Nassar was not the first person to be executed for alleged witchcraft by the Saudi government this year. In September, a Sudanese man was publicly decapitated with a sword in the city of Medina after he was found guilty of the same crime.

    According to Amnesty International, at least 79 people have been executed in Saudi Arabia so far in 2011, more than three times as many as in 2010. The human rights group condemned the kingdom's reliance on capital punishment.

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    "Where the death penalty is used, under international law it should only be applied to the most serious crimes," Luther said.

    The Saudi embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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    35 comments

    • mangdo  •  Kuwait City, Kuwait  •  3 mths ago
      that is there country....K.S.A. has it's own rules....just like any country....leave it to them...that is their own business...you@#$%^&*...ich...
    • Saqi Shah  •  Islamabad, Pakistan  •  4 mths ago
      why people are more interested in death of a witchcraft and NOT SHOWING any dare about IRAQ killing Palestine, kashmire ..............................Please don t talk about freedom of speech.....
    • jetbender  •  4 mths ago
      Saudi Arabia is actively looking at nuclear weapons. Stone Age mentality meets the atom splitter.
      • Saqi Shah 4 mths ago
        they have every right to get nuclear weapons as anyother state or country.
    • jetbender  •  Davenport, Iowa  •  4 mths ago
      The picture above of all those poor women wrapped in creepy black deathgarb says it all.
    • Dwayne  •  Wilmington, North Carolina  •  4 mths ago
      I bet Eric Holder Obama token boy wouldn't do anything about a Dearborn honor killing.
    • Sam  •  5 mths ago
      this is what happens when you let a religion run things like you are living in the middle ages.
      • Saqi Shah 4 mths ago
        you know what happened when people don t follow religion or conisdered that there is God, they attach and kill innocent people like Killing in Iraq, Palestine, Kashmire..Labiya Sumilya ..........and so on just to get Oil your gorvnments kills innocent peoples...please dare to speak about that
      • Sam 4 mths ago
        @ saqi shah more people have been killed in the name of god then any amount of oil. get your head out of the sand and read a book
    • Ed  •  5 mths ago
      This is the religion of tolerance, and peace?
      • Saqi Shah 4 mths ago
        witch craft is a crime ...... ........
      • Adam 3 mths ago
        This isn't the result of Islam, this is the result of a vile dictatorship twisting a religion to fit their animal lust for power and control, Islam, as it was originally taught by Muhammad, contains principles that any religion would be proud to espouse. Unfortunately, as the Catholic Church in the dark ages, it is merely a vehicle for the corrupt and wicked to find dominion over others.
      • Ed 3 mths ago
        @ Sagi Shah!!! are you asking, or telling me that witchcraft is a crime? Because if you are telling me that witchcraft is a crime, and you actually believe that then you have to get out of the 4th. century. Only children and ignorant uneducated people believe such rubbish!
    • Whitefeather  •  5 mths ago
      What a civilized bunch our Saudi allies are.
    • Rational  •  5 mths ago
      Off with their heads...straight out of Alice in Wonderland Islamic style! Were sweets passed on to the onlookers? Does that "witch" get 72 male virgins or is she barred from Paradise by this death cult? Did she get raped (as is usually done) before her death?

      All this hoopla for the greater glory of Allah-Baba the Murderer-in-Chief from Hell and Momo the murderous raping pedo., his illiterate mouthpiece. The Koran, Hadiths, Sunnahs, other Muslim hate literature and Islamic pseudo-legal opinions should get full credit for another savage murder of an innocent.

      The trial judges deserve accolades for their routine display of profound ignorance, arrant stupidity and bloodthirsty cruelty...one "attaboy" apiece! What a sorry lot of primitive unevolved hominid savages.
      • Randy Howard 5 mths ago
        Can't evolve.... Mohamud wouldn't like it.... (I'd add a cartoon, but they'd put out a contract on me)
      • Saqi Shah 4 mths ago
        How you justify killing in Iraq Mr.Idiot ............why you are so up set.....that witch was t your daughter.....
      • Saqi Shah 4 mths ago
        dare to speak for innocent killing in Iraq.....
    • Impulse  •  Kiev, Ukraine  •  5 mths ago
      There is no thing as witchcraft or god.
      when will people become normal?
    • Amykins  •  5 mths ago
      I'm a stanch liberal and even I don't understand why we don't just make a glass crater out of that hellhole of a nation. If I were one of the oppressed I'd choose death over living a life like that any day; as for the countless oppressors, good riddance.
      • CTA Gray Line Project 5 mths ago
        We DON'T make a "crater" out of them Amykins because WE NEED THEIR OIL JUST LIKE HEROIN.

        They could behead E V E R Y woman in Saudi Arabia, and America won't say or do C R A P - we would deeply suck Saudi King Butt rather than face $8.00 per gallon Gas; sorry to be so vulgar - BUT IT'S TRUE.
    • DLC  •  5 mths ago
      This is just sick!! This is 2011 and not the 1600's. What is wrong with these back ward in human #$%$ I am so glad I live in the USA. God Bless the USA!!!!!
    • Patriot  •  Cicero, United States  •  5 mths ago
      And to think that our President bowed down to these people.
    • Santos  •  Phoenix, Arizona  •  5 mths ago
      The koran and sharia are words from satan.
    • The Maine Idea  •  Sacramento, California  •  5 mths ago
      Does this mean that Christine O'Donnell no longer supports the death penalty?
    • misha  •  5 mths ago
      Cultural/religious practice mix-up. I live in an Islamic country where we have both civil and syaria laws, but no one gets beheaded here! The problem is not the religion, but people 'practicing' it.
    • Mac Sung  •  Buffalo, United States  •  5 mths ago
      Get real dudes, there is no such thing as witchcraft or scorcery! What are you in the dark ages?....
    • Gideon  •  New Orleans, United States  •  5 mths ago
      Gotta love our forward thinking Middle Eastern brethren.
    • A Yahoo! User  •  Oak Brook, United States  •  5 mths ago
      Funny we don't ever hear the outcry of Human rights from our govt to these people. But we are quick to preach Human Values to China and Russia.
    • RickyRecon  •  Fayetteville, United States  •  5 mths ago
      BARBARIANS!! CAVE-PEOPLE WITH CARS!!! And we support their despicable #$%$backward arrogance and their 'religion of peace' by buying oil from them so they can drive gold-plated Mercedes'. And chop off people's heads. SICK!!
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