Saudi Arabia beheading rate increases, new executioners recruited

Ninety people were executed in 2014.

In Saudi Arabia, death sentences are usually performed by beheading. Now, Saudi Arabia is recruiting eight new executioners to carry out the rising number of death sentences.

MUNTINLUPA, PHILIPPINES (Catholic Online) - Saudi Arabia has begun advertising for new executioners, whose main role is particularly "executing a judgment of death."

Their task involves performing amputations on those who are convicted of  lesser crimes.

A downloadable application form for the executioner jobs was available on the website and stated that the jobs were classified as "religious functionaries" and they would be at the lower end of the civil service pay scale.

According to Amnesty, there were at least 90 executions completed in 2014 alone. A man, beheaded recently this year, was the 8th person whose execution was recorded by the official Saudi Press Agency, according to Human Rights Watch.

Rights groups say that the Islamic Kingdom is one of the top five countries in the entire world for putting people to death.

In 2014, the Islamic Kingdom ranked third next to China and Iran. It came ahead of Iran and United States in the same year, according to statistics from Amnesty International.

Most executions are carried with murder charges. However, 38 people executed committed drug offenses. Of these people, about half were Saudi and the others were from Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, India, Indonesia, Burma, Chad, Eritrea, the Philippines and Sudan.

Saudi officials have not given explanation as to why the numbers of executions rose noticeably and rapidly.

However, representatives and diplomats have speculated that the reason might be because more judges have been appointed, allowing a backlog of appeal cases to be heard. On the other hand, political analysts say that it might also be due to the strict response by the judiciary to regional turbulence.

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