Saudi Arabia beheads convicted Pakistani drug trafficker

RIYADH: Saudi authorities beheaded a Pakistani on Thursday after sentencing him to death for drug trafficking, the interior ministry said, taking to 25 the number of executions announced this year. Sultan Hussein Khadim was put to the sword in the kingdom's Eastern Province, said a ministry statement carried by the official SPA news agency. 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.