Executions in Saudi Arabia are public. The Saudi Monarchy: Executions, Torture and a Gay Paradise

On January 2, Saudi Arabia executed 47 people at once on charges of promoting extremist ideology, terrorist activities, and participation in conspiracies, among whom was the Shiite preacher Nimr al-Nimr. This caused a wave of indignation around the world and, above all, in Shiite Iran, where protesters broke into the Saudi embassy building and tried to start a fire there. As a result, this led to a severance of diplomatic relations between Riyadh and Tehran.

Almost simultaneously, the blood of those executed was shed on the territory controlled by the Islamic State (IS, ISIS, Arabic version of the name - Daesh) banned in Russia. His militants published a video in which they killed five British citizens accused of espionage.

These two incidents are a reason to once again think about the fundamental kinship of two Sharia entities, Saudi Arabia and the Islamic State, one of which enjoys public patronage from the collective West.

Scenes from the Middle Ages

A typical execution scene in Saudi Arabia looks like this. In front of us are many people in white robes and red turbans-gutras. The executioner raises a sharpened saber and with a slight movement chops off the condemned man's head. The head falls on the asphalt, the executioner moves away a few steps so as not to be splashed with gushing blood. After this we see cars passing by. According to Sharia law, the execution must be public and devout Muslims must observe it so that the crimes are not repeated in the future. But nowadays there are few people who want to watch the execution, so the executioners simply block the busy intersection. Drivers of stopped cars are forced to watch the execution. Once the execution is over, a fire truck quickly clears the intersection and traffic is reopened. This is Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia. Sharia law has been in effect in this land for hundreds of years.

Here are the impressions of a similar spectacle from a Time newspaper photographer: “When the execution began, the rebels grabbed him by the throat. He began to resist. Three or four rebels pinned him to the ground. The man tried to protect his throat with his hands, which were still tied. He struggled, but the rebels were stronger and they cut his throat. They raised his severed head into the air. People around began to wave their weapons and cheer. Everyone was happy that the execution took place. This scene was like something out of the Middle Ages, something you usually read about in history books. The war in Syria has reached the point where a person can be mercilessly killed in front of hundreds of people who enjoy the spectacle.” This is already the city of Kefergan, a territory controlled by the Islamic State.

Here's another execution. Here, apparently, cutting off the head is not enough. The Sri Lankans convicted of murder were first beheaded and then their bodies were crucified on crosses. Their corpses will be displayed for public desecration - so that others will be embarrassed. Are they really radicals from IS again? No, this is the city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

How to eat a woman

And it was necessary! A 50-year-old Indian woman who worked as a maid in Saudi Arabia complained about cruel treatment and delayed salaries. After the maid tried to escape, the employer tied her to the balcony of her own sari and chopped off her right hand. The woman was taken to a Riyadh hospital by neighbors. Representatives of the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the incident “a terrible and condemnable incident.” Despite this, the Saudis have not yet been punished.

A woman in Saudi Arabia is generally a creature without rights. For example, in 2014, the country's Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz Ali allowed cannibalism. Aziz Ali stated literally the following: “If a man is mortally hungry and does not find food at home, he can cut off a fragment of his wife’s body and eat it. A woman should approach this decision with devotion and humility, since she is one with her husband.”

The militants of the Islamic State also decided to implement the advice of Saudi textbooks. In the Iraqi city of Mosul they captured, a man accused of homosexuality was thrown from the roof of a house. Dozens of people came to watch the execution, including children. One of the terrorists announced into the microphone that the man had been sentenced to death. People crowded around his crushed body, although the sight was not for the faint of heart.

A tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye

However, IS practices even more brutal methods of killing. Recently, a video of the execution of a 19-year-old soldier appeared on the Internet. Syrian army. The fighter was a tanker. In the video, he walks towards a terrorist tank and falls under its tracks. The car runs over the young fighter, leaving him with only crushed bones and a flattened brain.

Here's another application of the ancient principle of talion (where punishment reproduces the harm done): a captured Jordanian pilot stands in an iron cage. He is wearing bright orange clothes doused with a flammable mixture. A militant in light camouflage sets fire to a path of gasoline with a torch; the fire engulfs the entire cage and the executed man.

But in the Saudi kingdom there are “milder” punishments. Blogger Raifa Badawi was accused of insulting Islam. Badawi discussed religious issues on his blog and criticized the current government. For this, the Sharia state sentenced him to a thousand lashes, a fine of 1 million Saudi riyals and ten years in prison. Probably, out of “philanthropy,” the lashes will be applied gradually: fifty lashes every week.

The death penalty in Saudi Arabia also applies to foreigners: on May 6, 2015, five people from Saudi Arabia were executed there. East Africa. They were accused of killing an Indian security guard and stealing his money. The Africans were beheaded, after which their corpses were hung from a helicopter. According to authorities, this should deter others from committing similar crimes.

Crushed hopes

According to Western human rights activists, since January 1985, more than 2.2 thousand people have been executed in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, about half of them are foreigners.

Until the 90s of the last century, women in the kingdom were shot. However, then the authorities decided that... representatives of the fairer sex should also have their heads cut off. To determine religious affiliation, a Saudi visa contains a column about the religion of the foreigner. The country has a religious police (muttawa). Soldiers of the Sharia Guard constantly patrol the streets and public institutions of Saudi cities in order to suppress attempts to violate the canons of Islam. If a violation is detected, the perpetrator is punished - from a fine to beheading.

Amnesty International's report on death penalty It noted that "there were some hopes for human rights reforms when King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud took the throne in early 2014, but these have now been completely dashed."

The death penalty is protected at the state level in Saudi Arabia. The president of the Saudi Human Rights Commission, Bandar Al-Aiban, said the kingdom cannot neglect the rights of victims of criminals. A little earlier, the press secretary of the country’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, General Mansour Al-Turki, explained the difference between the death sentence carried out in the Islamic State and Saudi practice. “IS does not have any legal mechanism in deciding to execute people,” Al-Turki said.

Was it because of the presence of a “legal mechanism” that Saudi Arabia’s permanent representative to the UN, Faisal Trat, was recently appointed chairman of the advisory group at the UN Human Rights Council?

Who is bad and who is good

Double standards have always been part of world politics - just remember the examples different interpretations the right of peoples to self-determination and the principle of territorial integrity. Kosovo Albanians can secede, but Russians in Crimea cannot. Jews are entitled to their own national state, but Kurds are not. Slobodan Milosevic is bad, so we bomb Yugoslavia, and Al Saud sells oil, we shake his hand. With whom I am friends, I forgive, and with whom I am not friends, I bring democracy to him...

However, you need to know when to stop. It’s time for our Western partners to understand that there is no fundamental difference between the Saudi regime and the terrorist IS - and not only in the area of ​​administration of justice. Without waiting for cases of beheadings of people by Islamist fanatics to become a sustainable practice not only in the Middle East, but also in the center Western capitals- with grateful spectators, legal interpreters and paid executioners.

How will your first day in Saudi Arabia start?

Friday, noon. A crowd surrounded the center of old Riyadh. The city's main mosque has just finished big prayer al-Juma. A sharp sword, a little more than a meter long, with an Arabic-curved end, forged from steel shining in the sun, is now raised high above the head of a kneeling figure. From under the white clothes that hide the entire body, only the bare neck peeks out. Sixty or more people stood waiting, standing around the perimeter of a wide quadrangular square, guarded by a huddled row of eight soldiers dressed in bronze-colored uniforms.

The executioner, who has raised his sword, takes on menacing proportions and seems somehow mystically ghostly, like a vision, in his long white dishdasha shirt and red checkered keffiyeh bandage. He is ready to make a decisive swing, but suddenly retreats back. He takes a couple of steps away from the chopping block. He quietly confers with two police officers and one other man - the only person who can stop him: the victim of a criminal sentenced to death.

The short meeting is over. The executioner returns to the block. He puts his right leg forward, his left leg wide back, as if doing a stretch. The raised sword gives a second reflection of the sun. A second - and..!

But the executioner just smoothly lowers the sword onto the neck of the condemned man. Gives him the feel of hardened steel. The criminal's body tenses and freezes in anticipation. The sword swings high again, only this time it’s for real. One precise and powerful blow cuts through skin, muscle and bone with a dull, hollow echo. A bloody waterfall breaks out from the severed neck onto the granite square with a characteristic sound, as if wet laundry is being squeezed into a steel basin. The headless body leans forward, tumbles slightly and falls on its right side.

The executioner wipes the sword with a piece of white cloth. The crowd parts as two men in blue overalls emerge from the depths of the low arches that surround the square, lift the body and place it on a stretcher. One of them picks up the head by the piece of cloth in which it was wrapped. The crimes are read out loud: rape, drug trafficking and demonic possession. The executioner sheaths the sword. A thickly bearded man in a soldier's uniform claps his palms and raises them to the sky.

In five minutes, there will be no one left in the square except the cleaner, hosing down the bloody granite with water.

The death penalty is used in many countries. Public capital punishment is popular in only four places on the planet. Well, public capital punishment using the full range of “technologies”, such as: hanging, beheading, stoning, shooting, as well as beheading followed by crucifixion of the body cranes- Applicable only in Saudi Arabia. In Iran, they execute 7 times more people per year, but even there they do without beheading. When comparing Saudia and other countries, for some reason this important detail is often forgotten.

Someone writes that recently public executions have stopped being carried out in Saudi Arabia, and the situation is improving. Nothing like this. The wide quadrangular square on which the head of the executed man flew is called Chop-Chop Square by the locals.

Chop-Chop Square is nothing interesting. It's just an empty place in the center of old Riyadh, surrounded by low walls. In one of the adjacent buildings there is the central city mosque. Not far from the square there are court buildings and various ministries. Ideal place for the death penalty.

The architectural complex of the square is completed by the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, on the sandy facade of which hangs a poster with the slogan: “My prayer is my happiness.”

On all days except Friday, the square is unremarkable and even boring. Arabs sit at tables in the shade and drink tea, prayers take place in the mosque, and in general it’s very nice to relax under the palm trees in the heat.

On Friday there is a special, long Friday prayer, which is very important for Muslims. Countless crowds of Riyadh residents flock to the nearest mosques from all directions. Around central square everything is cordoned off by the police. Sirens are constantly wailing and dozens of red and blue lights are flashing. It feels like they are not here to protect against a terrorist attack, but as if a terrorist attack has already occurred.

There is no desire to be even close to Chop-Chop Square at this time, let alone even think about going inside. Any non-Muslim is stopped by armed soldiers and carefully searched. Then they let you through.

The author came to watch the death penalty, holding the camera in his bag and turned off - I wouldn’t want to lose it myself for trying to film the beheading. Armed soldiers on the approach to the square checked the bag, looked at each other, said something on the radio and let me through. Then I sat on a bench for half an hour and waited to see what would happen.

A few minutes later the Arabs left, having finished their tea. A police jeep arrived and dropped off the officer on duty a few meters away. Then the jeep drove into sight to the other end of the square, and the soldier remained standing and pretending that he didn’t care about me. The author sat on a bench under the palm trees, arms folded, holding the camera turned off in his bag.

Nothing else happened on the square. No death penalty. But as soon as I got up and walked towards the exit, the soldier immediately stopped me. He asked me to open the bag. I took the camera and turned it on. He asked me to look through the photographs showing the streets of Riyadh. Then he snatched the camera from his hands and began flipping through reverse side, reporting on the radio what he sees in each photograph. Several minutes passed like this until he was convinced that I was not renting the area.

I didn't see the death penalty. They really stopped being held in Chop-Chop Square, but only in this square! In order to avoid crowds of onlookers, the Saudi authorities now carry out beheadings not at the central mosque, but in the place where the crime was committed.

It's incredible how crazy the laws are here. First, the killer is arrested and sent to prison. They are holding a trial. Only one thing can save him from the death penalty - ransom. Often the relatives of the killer and the relatives of the victim agree on a ransom among themselves. As a result, murderers are not always executed, and the lives of drug dealers, homosexuals and political dissidents, whom either no one cares about or are more expensive to get involved with, end up on the line.

The most important thing: after the trial, if it is possible to establish the crime scene, the victim is taken to this place, wherever it is, and the head is cut off there. Even if it’s right in the middle of the street. For example, like this woman who killed and raped a child, screaming to the end that she was not guilty.

Well, nothing else happens in Chop-Chop Square. Not far from the former scaffold, a city museum was opened in a former fort. Workers and businessmen often come here on weekends to hold school excursions. Almost none of these “tourists” even know that heads were chopped off a hundred meters later.

Old Riyadh

Masmak Fortress is a beautifully executed remake, a reconstruction of an old fort.

Restored in the fortress arabic interior The 19th century is boring and meaningless, like all of Arabia.

Model of the old city.

Quotes from King Abdul Aziz hang on the wall: “I conquered this country thanks to the will of Allah and the Arab spirit.”

In the courtyard there is a working copy of the will of Allah.

Interesting characters. They were sniffing out something with some cunning spirit.

Streets behind the fortress.

Next to the fort there is also a market, a typical bazaar like in any third world country. The market sells carpets, clothes and gold.

As soon as I took this harmless photo, the police noticed me. He called me to his car and asked for my passport. I considered a business visa for a long time. Realizing that I was of no use, he made a saddened, downright upset face and in the teacher’s voice kindergarten said:

Andrew... Are you... Taking photographs?.. (Like, aren’t you ashamed, you’re a businessman)
- Yes, I’m just Fort Masmak!
- A-ah-ah, well, go, inshallah.

⁂

There is another one a few kilometers from Riyadh historical place- ruins of the old city of Ad-Dir.

Restored ruins, of course.

You can write about them for exactly one reason - it’s surprisingly empty and clumsy, as if you were in a plastic model.

But it must be said that the Arabs restore conscientiously. The doors seem to have been carved by the same master as 200 years ago.

However, it is not necessary to go to the artificial ruins. To tell you a secret, there are plenty of real ruins in the center. I walked around the city for a long time, visiting all the non-tourist places. Hidden behind shabby skyscrapers and a wealthy private sector, Riyadh at its core consists of dirty, shitty streets lined with shabby low-rise buildings.

This is what is happening a hundred meters from Chop-Chop Square.

This is what the real Riyadh looks like. Just like those museum ruins, only for real. The old houses, built of sand and coral, seemed to be washed away by water - only heaps of clay remained, no frame.

Such streets occupy more than half of the city. Riyadh is full of Pakistani neighborhoods that look even worse.

I walked around the whole city; I decided to take the camera out only in a couple of places. After all the Saudi paranoia and two arrests, who knows whether they would have mistaken me for a spy or just a careless fool.

A large, oil-rich Middle Eastern country that borders Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq and Jordan, Saudi Arabia is the most influential power on the Arabian Peninsula. Saudi Arabia is the “Land of the Two Holy Mosques,” home to the oldest Islamic cities, and one of the few states with an absolute monarchy. She is the only one with access to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf. The kingdom is, of course, beautiful, but its traditions of treating women and the use of the death penalty are controversial issues for the whole world. Saudi Arabia also leads the leadership of the OPEC oil cartel, which has enormous influence over the global oil market.
One day the Kingdom armedly invaded civil war in Yemen, supporting the government against Houthi militants. But outside help does not exclude the presence of its own problems: falling oil prices, internal political disagreements and attempts to diversify the economy. In Western understanding, this country is an anachronism, where the fundamentalist interpretation of Islam is absolute law, and where women are prohibited from driving. But on the other hand, here are the roots great history and cultures to which millions of Muslims flock annually for the Hajj pilgrimage and vast oil fields.
Here are 15 amazing facts about the oil Kingdom of Saudi Arabia:
15. NO ELECTIONS, PARLIAMENT, POLITICAL PARTIES AND DISSENT

There is an absolute monarchy, no national elections, no political parties, no representative parliament, and only a symbolic advisory body, the Majlis al-Shura, or Consultative Assembly, which has no power to make laws or enforce them. This open disregard for democratic norms has been going on for decades. Along with the most brutal dictatorial countries, Saudi Arabia regularly receives the most low scores civil and political liberties from think tanks like Freedom House.
There is no constitution, although the charter known as the Basic Law of Saudi Arabia, adopted by royal decree in 1992, obliges the monarch to rule by observing Sharia law and the Koran instead of the constitution. Criticism and dissent are strictly prohibited: activists are regularly jailed and given harsh punishments. Examples: Abd al-Karim, who demanded a transition to a constitutional monarchy and received 8 years in prison for this, and blogger Raif Badawi, who received 1000 lashes for calling for freedom of speech.
14. HOUSE OF THE HOLY ISLAMIC CITIES


Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam and the holiest religious sites - Mecca and Medina. The 13-meter-tall Kaaba is the holiest place in the Great Mosque of Mecca, Islam's holiest mosque. All Muslims direct their prayers to her. One of the five pillars of Islam requires that every Muslim make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in his life, if he has the strength and finances to do so. Approximately two million people visit Saudi Arabia every year.
It is easy to guess that a large concentration of pilgrims in one place can lead to serious problems, such as the 2015 stampede, which reportedly killed and injured more than 2,000 people.
13. THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH EXECUTIONERS FOR ALL EXECUTIONS


The death penalty is widespread in Saudi Arabia. In 2015, the authorities held them every other day. The country ranks 4th in the world in the number of executions, carried out for reasons such as adultery and rejection of Islam. In most cases, execution is carried out by cutting off the head with a scimitar. Kingdom may be the only country, which suffers from a shortage of executioners: at the beginning of 2013, the government considered changing the method of execution due to an insufficient number of executioners. The method of execution is considered priority.
In addition, Saudi Arabia is one of only four countries that still has public executions. Diera Square in the center of Riyadh is a famous site for public beheadings, known locally as “chop-chop square.”
12. HUGE OIL RESERVES


What words come to mind when you think of Saudi Arabia? Since the Kingdom is the largest exporter of petroleum raw materials, its name is synonymous with everything related to oil and gas. More than half of GDP comes from profits oil industry. Oil reserves are simply unreal: the largest Gavar field can accommodate 4,770,897 Olympic swimming pools. It is estimated that even after decades of pumping oil for export, there are still about 75 billion barrels left.
Saudi Arabia has 22 percent of the world's oil reserves, only Venezuela has more. In 1960, the Kingdom was a founding member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. Due to the large oil industry, 30 percent of the country's population are foreign workers.
11. THE LARGEST COUNTRY WITHOUT A SINGLE RIVER


The area of ​​Saudi Arabia is more than 2 million square kilometers puts it in 13th place in the world in terms of territorial size. More than 95 percent are deserts and semi-deserts, many of which are the largest on earth (Great Nefud in the north and Rub al-Khali in the south). Due to the abundance of deserts and an average temperature of about 45 degrees Celsius, Saudi Arabia does not have rivers or lakes, but there are underground reservoirs.
This is the most big country Middle East, it makes up most of the Arabian Peninsula (about a quarter of the US) and is the world's largest territorial entity without a single river on the map.
10. THE ROYAL FAMILY IS WORTH $14 TRILLION


As heads of the House of Saud, the monarch and thousands of his royal relatives occupy all important positions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The royal power of this country would have been the object of desire of any medieval court; King Salman's net worth is estimated at more than $17 billion, and more than 7,000 family princes (some estimates put the royalty at around 30,000) hold important positions while more talented candidates are left out due to the wrong surname.
The royal family receives huge profits from the state oil monopoly, estimated at about 270 billion a year.
In fact, if you put the entire wealth of the Saudi royal family into a single sum, it would be about $14 trillion.
9. SEVERE PUNISHMENTS

We've already mentioned the harsh laws of Saudi Arabia, what about the punishments? It turns out they are no better: the legal system uses the same ultra-conservative and traditionalist Hanbali school as the basis of jurisprudence as the terrorist Islamic State. Trial occurs solely on the basis of a specific interpretation of Islamic law.
Punishments by the authorities included cutting off hands and feet for theft, lashing and stoning for adultery and other acts, and beheading for rebellion, political crimes, drug smuggling and witchcraft. Death sentences are also imposed for blasphemy, homosexuality and violent robbery. Saudi Arabia has failed to respond to ever-increasing pressure to liberalize its legal system and has consistently resorted to punishment and death penalties.
8. DANGEROUS QUIRK “SIDEWALK SKIING”


This is quite a daring entertainment, fraught with a “fun” danger. The trick consists of driving on two wheels on one side of a car along the roadway, during which a person climbs onto the car and stands on top of it throughout the movement. Fans of this entertainment treat it with purely sporting interest, but this is one of the most useless and dangerous inventions that humanity has ever produced.
In one video, a team of similar “stuntmen” gets out of a car to change its tire. All this happens on the go. To say "Don't try this at home" is an understatement.
7. TENT SETTLEMENT


Initially, pilgrims took tents with them on their journey and set them up on the plains of Mina. In the 1990s, the Saudi Arabian government made housing easier for religious tourists by establishing a campsite with regular cotton tents. But in 1997, a fire occurred in the settlement, which claimed the lives of 350 pilgrims. After which a new camp with fire-resistant awnings was organized. The city of Mina has 100,000 neat fireproof tents with air conditioning, kitchen and bathroom. In essence, this is a modern residential complex.
The state-of-the-art tents can accommodate approximately 3 million people. About 5 days a year they are occupied by pilgrims, and the rest of the time they are empty. The kingdom received a barrage of global criticism after refusing to accommodate Syrian refugees there.
6. PROBLEM WITH WOMEN'S LINGERIE


Women are effectively prohibited from working outside the home. This causes awkward situations, such as when the salesperson in the lingerie department is a man. Confused women, who could not make intimate purchases because of this, made an attempt to change the law. They were listened to, and in 2012 a decree was issued banning men from working in women's underwear stores.
But the decree contradicted Sharia, which is why about a hundred stores ignored the innovation. A few months after the law came into force, they were closed. The decree is still in effect, and various inspections regularly monitor its implementation. If a male seller is found, the stores are threatened with closure.
5. THEY HAVE “MAGIC POLICE”


In Saudi Arabia, everything that is directly or indirectly related to magic, witchcraft and sorcery is prohibited. It is considered a serious crime and people have even been beheaded for allegedly practicing magic. The government takes the magical threat so seriously that it has even banned the Harry Potter books and created special anti-witch police units. Created in 2009, the anti-witchcraft group is part of the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Unrest of the Saudi Religious Police. They are tasked with detaining sorcerers and preventing their spells. Since 2009, more than 500 people have been prosecuted for practicing magic.
People allegedly whispering spells, performing rituals, or caught with talismans can get into very serious trouble. But the issue of witchcraft is very subtle, because the original and generally accepted characteristics of witches are as follows: they have a broom on which they fly. Legal Code Saudi Arabia leaves the decision of this issue to the judge, who must sum up whether a person is guilty of witchcraft and whether he will receive the death penalty.
4. IN THE FUTURE, THE COUNTRY WITH THE TALLEST BUILDING IN THE WORLD


The most awaited event for all people globe– construction of “The Most tall building in the world". On this moment this position is held by the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. In 2018, the Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia, also known as the Royal Tower, will proudly take the title. It will be the first building in history to reach a kilometer in height and will be the glittering centerpiece of Saudi Arabia's new coastal city. To imagine what this would look like, imagine the World shopping mall in New York (541 meters) - this is a little more than half the estimated height of the Royal Tower.
Once completed, the tower will contain a hotel, an observatory, offices and obscenely expensive penthouses. Preliminary cost: $1.2 billion. Now the project is called “the limit of engineering possibilities.”
3. WOMEN'S RIGHTS ARE EVEN WORSE THAN YOU THOUGHT


Before traveling to Saudi Arabia, it is strongly recommended that you familiarize yourself with its laws. Women's rights in the Gulf have been the subject of social controversy recently. It is now the last country on earth where women are not allowed to drive. This fact attracts representatives of funds everywhere mass media. This is just the tip of the iceberg; without a man's permission, women are prohibited from leaving the house, making purchases, opening a bank account, getting a job, going to school, acting in a legal or other official capacity, or consenting to surgery.
Until recently, women could not vote or sit on the advisory chamber, making Saudi Arabia the last country, who gave female voting right. Before his death, King Abdullah allocated a fifth of the council chamber to women and allowed them to vote, but this was a largely symbolic gesture that had little impact on the lives of Saudi women.
2. ONE OF THE LARGEST MILITARY BUDGETS IN THE WORLD


For a country of 33 million people, Saudi Arabia's military spending is enormous. The kingdom typically ranks 4th in the world in terms of military spending, behind the United States, China and Russia, with all superpowers having vastly larger populations and territories. In 2015, it ranked 3rd, raising its budget from $80 billion to more than $87 billion.
By the way, Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries that has one of the most advanced tanks in the world - the M1 Abrams. There are about several hundred of them. In 2010-2014, the Kingdom was the world's second largest arms importer.
1. IMPORT OF SAND AND CAMELS FROM AUSTRALIA


Yes, that's right: the sand country actually buys its sand from Australia. For what? It turns out that not a single type of Saudi sand is suitable for construction. To construct buildings, you need special alluvial sand without silica (it often creates a lot of dust and difficulties for workers when sandblasting). The Kingdom receives sand with the necessary properties wholesale from Australia.
Now about camels. In Saudi Arabia, they are used to transport people and goods, and sometimes for racing. Australia is happy to export its camels, which are wild and vicious in nature. Ironically, camels were first imported to Australia from Arabia, India and Afghanistan in the 19th century.

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a controversial and mysterious country with practices that are sometimes frightening to Europeans. A Muslim country where only one religion is recognized - Islam with the dominant current of Wahhabism. Where believers pray five times a day and live according to the religious laws of Sharia. Mecca of Muslim pilgrimage with the number of Muslim pilgrims in the hundreds of thousands. Owner of 25% of the planet's oil reserves and GDP per capita is not much less than even that of the United States. And the country, together with China, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan, is among the top five in terms of the number of cases of execution of the death penalty. In Saudi Arabia, this institution of punishment still exists today.

Public policy

The country is an absolute theocratic monarchy with an active cabinet of ministers. The Koran is the body of rules or, in Western terms, the constitution. Justice is based on a religious foundation and is represented by the Sharia court. The word “justice” is applied very conditionally, since the country does not have any criminal code, and the judge makes decisions based on Sharia law. There are two types of police in the country: ordinary and religious - the commission for the promotion of virtue or mutawa. It is she who is called upon to monitor compliance with the ethical standards of the Koran and the implementation of all prohibitions.

Features of Saudi justice

According to Sharia law, three types of punishment are applied:

Procedural features

To be charged in a Sharia court, a confession and an oath are sufficient. There are no restrictions for mentally ill people and those under the age of majority. There is no difference between citizens of the kingdom and foreigners. A lawyer is an unnecessary and unaffordable luxury, even when it comes to execution in Saudi Arabia. Recently, there are no differences in punishment based on gender.

Saudi Arabia: lashings

It is this type of punishment that most often ends up in the news columns of Western media. This type of execution is no more common in Saudi Arabia than in all Muslim countries. Although let's not lie - here they hit much more often and harder. A record number of lashes - four thousand - were administered in 1990. Egyptian Muhammad Ali al-Sayyid received such a sentence for robbery. The Sharia judge declared this punishment to be a mercy, because initially they wanted to cut off the hand of the convicted person.

The merciful Themis of Sharia divides the number of lashes and extends the punishment over a long period. Few people can withstand a hundred lashes, so the victim is allowed a period of rehabilitation, and then the execution resumes.

Such executions in Saudi Arabia are public and are carried out in front of a crowd of citizens.

Decapitation and other horrors

A terrible public punishment for a Western person is cutting off the head followed by crucifixion for educational purposes. This is an almost ceremonial murder that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages. Executions take place in the main square after lunchtime prayers. The cutting off of the head is carried out by the executioner - there is such a position in the kingdom, it is inherited in the al-Bishi family. The presence of a doctor is required. Horrible!

Prohibition of alcohol - how they are executed in Saudi Arabia

The consumption, production and storage of alcohol is strictly prohibited by Sharia law. Punishment is given in the form of lashes. The case of the Briton Carl Andy is indicative. A seventy-three-year-old man was found with a bottle of homemade wine. Despite the fact that Carl suffered from asthma and cancer, he spent almost a year in prison awaiting 350 strokes. The pinnacle of diplomacy can be called the efforts of embassy workers who, under the threat of deterioration in relations, were able to take the sick Briton home.

But what is excusable to the allies of the Wahhabi state is completely unforgivable to everyone else and is subject to severe punishment in Saudi Arabia. Thus, a resident of the Philippines, Faustino Salazaro, received four months in prison and 75 lashes for just buying a couple of packages of chocolate with liquor inside at Duty Free Bahrain.

Debauchery and adultery

Preventing these acts contrary to the Koran is an important component of Sharia justice. Moreover, the actions are interpreted in multiple meanings and very broadly. An illustration can be found in an incident that occurred in 2006 and was covered by the Western press as the “Qatif rape.” Seven men kidnapped the couple while they were in the car and sexually assaulted them both. The Sharia judge determined the punishment for rapists in the form of several hundred lashes and long periods imprisonment. But the victims also suffered because they were accused of debauchery, because these people were not spouses. They were also sentenced to six months' imprisonment and 200 lashes. The Western world erupted in outraged protests. Under pressure from the world community, King Abdullah nevertheless overturned the judge’s decision regarding the victim, although he called the judge’s actions fair for such a Muslim country as Saudi Arabia. Executions of people for such crimes should be severe, he emphasized in an interview with Western journalists.

You can lose your head for having a same-sex relationship

Homosexuality is brutally persecuted in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Executions for this crime can be the most brutal. Yet this phenomenon is quite common. The education system is based on gender segregation; minimizing contact between men and women before marriage leads to the development of homosexual manifestations among young people.

In addition, there is a kind of unspoken agreement between LGBT communities and the country's authorities. Homosexuals openly revere the norms of Wahhabism, and the authorities do not notice the personal life of this category of subjects. Excesses often happen, but more often the judges' sentences are quite lenient.

The most brutal executions in Saudi Arabia are for witchcraft

For vigilant neighbors and colleagues, the country has created a hotline to report citizens who practice magic or witchcraft. The court's verdict is clear - cutting off (decapitation) the head and crucifixion of the body as an edification to all living and an example of how apostates are executed in Saudi Arabia. Moreover, the presence of the Koran in the toilet may be sufficient for prosecution, as happened in 2007 with the Egyptian pharmacist Mustafa Ibrahim.

Foreign guest workers often suffer from anti-magic workers. Two Asian maids in 2013 “got off lightly” with 1,000 lashes and ten years behind bars for inflicting magical damage on their employer, whose mere statement was enough to execute the women.

In Saudi Arabia, according to Amnesty International, 154 people were executed in 2016. This figure is not much less than in 2015 (158). The brutal execution in Saudi Arabia, photos of examples of which filled the pages of the media, cannot leave Western viewers indifferent. Asking the question of how this can happen in a prosperous state of the 21st century, we find the answer in the Koran - a book written in 600 AD. According to this ancient source, all sins are criminal offenses and carry such severe penalties. Why does this not correspond to the norms? international law And modern ideas about humanism - as they say, “don’t go for a walk in Africa, kids.” Of course, if you are not a Wahhabi Muslim.

Execution process

The execution process itself in Saudi Arabia is a whole ceremony, the traditions of which have been preserved and expanded over many hundreds of years.

All executions take place after midday prayers in the central square. The person condemned to death is brought to the place blindfolded. Law enforcement forces clear the area of ​​cars and passers-by, after which a piece of blue cloth or plastic is spread on the ground.

In some cases, execution can be replaced by pardon by agreement of the parties and payment of so-called “blood money” - compensation for the crime committed.

For example, television Islamic preacher Fayhan Al-Gamdi, accused of raping and beating his five-year-old daughter to death, avoided execution by paying blood money and was initially released from custody a few months later, but later, after resonance and indignation in society and the blogosphere, still received a sentence of 8 years and 600 lashes, and the authorities announced that they plan to create a 24-hour hotline to report child abuse.