A woman
beheaded in a Saudi street for killing her husband's 6yr old
daughter screams her innocence in graphic footage of the execution
uploaded to the Internet. An
executioner in Mecca, the holy city, took two swings to hack off Layla
bint Abdul Mutaleb Bassim's head, after she was found guilty of beating
the girl and raping her with a broomstick.
The
incident has sparked outrage in the country, but not because of the
brutal punishment meted out. Rather Saudis are up in arms that the
execution was filmed and posted online, where the woman's family might
see it.
Now Saudi
authorities have arrested someone for filming the execution, local media
reports. But it was not clear what crime he has been arrested for.
The
video of Bassim's execution shows how she begged for her life,
protesting her innocence right up until the executioner dealt his first
blow.
'I did not
kill. There is no God but God. I did not kill,' cries Bassim, who is
dressed entirely in black and is kneeling on the pavement circled by
police officers.
'Haram.
Haram. Haram. Haram. I did not kill ... I do not forgive you ... This
is an injustice,' she screams in the video, which was posted online on
Saturday.
The executioner, dressed in a white robe, forces her to lie down on the ground.
'I
did not,' she continues before a final scream as the executioner swings
his curved sword into her neck. His first blow fails to sever Bassim's
head entirely and he has to swing again before she is decapitated.
A voice then reads out her crime.
It is a traditional execution for the kingdom, which carries out death sentences in public.
Many Twitter
users protested the video being circulated on the internet because it
could be seen by the woman’s family, but did not object to the beheading
itself.
Bassim
was one of 10 people beheaded In Saudi Arabia so far this year. Saudi
Arabia executed 87 people last year, up from 78 in 2013.
The kingdom had the third-highest number of recorded executions in 2013, behind Iran and Iraq, Amnesty International says.
The
official Saudi Press Agency said last week that Bassim's execution came
after she was found guilty of the rape and murder of Kalthoum bint
Abdul Rahman bin Ghulam Gadir, her husband's daughter. 'Investigations
led to her trial which proved she was guilty,' the interior ministry was
quoted by SPA as saying.
A United Nations special rapporteur has said trials leading to the death penalty in Saudi Arabia are 'grossly unfair'.
Rape,
murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking are punishable by
death in the oil-rich Gulf state, which is a close ally of Washington
and a regular customer of both American and British arms companies.
Saudi
authorities identified Bassim as holding Burmese nationality but did
not specify if she was from its Rohingya Muslim community. The United
Nations describes Rohingya as one of the world's most persecuted
minorities.
Buddhist-majority Burma views its population of 800,000 Rohingya as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and denies them citizenship.
Burma's embassy said that without seeing her passport, it could not confirm whether or not she was a citizen.
