Saudi beheads citizen for murder

Saudi authorities beheaded on Tuesday one of its citizens after he was convicted of stabbing to death a fellow Saudi, the interior ministry announced in a statement carried by state news agency SPA. Khaled bin Saeed al-Asmari, who stabbed and fatally wounded Abdullah Bin Saad al-Masmaa in the chest after a dispute between the two men, was executed in the town of Abhaa in the kingdom's southern region of Asir, the ministry said. His beheading brings to 41 the number of people executed in Saudi Arabia so far this year, according to an AFP tally based on official reports. Under the AFP count, at least 76 people were beheaded in 2011, while rights group Amnesty International put the number of executions last year at 79. The death penalty in Saudi Arabia applies to a wide range of offences including rape, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking, as well as murder, as stipulated by Islamic sharia law.