Saudi beheads two for drug trafficking, murder

RIYADH: Saudi authorities on Thursday beheaded a Pakistani convicted drug trafficker and a local man found guilty of murder, the interior ministry said, raising to 26 the number of executions announced this year.
Sultan Hussein Khadim from Pakistan was put to the sword in the kingdom's Eastern Province, said a ministry statement carried by the official SPA news agency.
It later reported that Daus al-Dussari, condemned for stabbing to death a fellow Saudi, was beheaded near the capital Riyadh.
Last year, there were 78 executions in Saudi Arabia and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights denounced a "sharp increase in the use of capital punishment".
Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under the kingdom's strict version of Islamic sharia law. – AFP