RIYADH: Saudi Arabia executed a Jordanian man on Friday for drug trafficking in the kingdom, the interior ministry said.
Mohammed Abu Samak was arrested “as he was smuggling a large amount of banned amphetamine pills,” said a ministry statement carried by the official SPA news agency.
His beheading in the northwestern region of Tabuk is part of a surge in executions that has alarmed human rights activists.
Saudi Arabia has already executed 68 people so far this year, after 87 in all of 2014, according to AFP tallies.
Drug trafficking, rape, murder, apostasy and armed robbery are all punishable by death under the kingdom’s strict version of Islamic sharia law.
Amnesty International’s 2014 global report on the death penalty ranks Saudi Arabia among the top five executioners in the world. -AFP
