The Most Absurd Human Rights Violations (26): Executing "Witches" in Saudi Arabia

witch hunt, witches burning at the stake

Scores of alleged witch doctors, fortunetellers, and black magicians each year are dragged through the Saudi courts, including Fawza Falih, who’s been on death row since 2006 for witchcraft. Her accusers include a man who claims the 51-year-old, illiterate Falih is the reason for his impotence. (source)

“The fact that Saudi judges still conduct trials for unprovable crimes like witchcraft underscores their inability to carry out objective criminal investigations,” said Joe Stork, the Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. … Falih had “retracted her confession in court, claiming it was extracted under duress, and that as an illiterate woman she did not understand the document she was forced to fingerprint”. “At one point, she had to be hospitalised as a result of beatings at the hands of the religious police, called the ‘mutaween’ in the ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim kingdom. … In November, Egyptian pharmacist Mustapha Ibrahim, who worked in the northern city of Arar, was beheaded by the sword for “sorcery” under Saudi Arabia’s strict Islamic laws for allegedly trying to separate a married couple. (source)

More on capital punishment in Saudi Arabia here.