BBC news
written by Staff
December 12, 2011
A Saudi woman has been executed for practising "witchcraft and sorcery", the country's interior ministry says.
A statement published by the state news agency said Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nasser was beheaded on Monday in the northern province of Jawf.
The ministry gave no further details of the charges which the woman faced.
The woman was the second person to be executed for witchcraft in Saudi Arabia this year. A Sudanese man was executed in September.
BBC regionalist analyst Sebastian Usher says the interior ministry stated that the verdict against Ms Nasser was upheld by Saudi Arabia's highest courts, but it did not give specific details of the charges.
The London-based newspaper, al-Hayat, quoted a member of the religious police as saying that she was in her 60s and had tricked people into giving her money, claiming that she could cure their illnesses.
Our correspondent said she was arrested in April 2009.
But the human rights group Amnesty International, which has campaigned for Saudis previously sentenced to death on sorcery charges, said it had never heard of her case until now, he adds.
A Sudanese man was executed in September on similar charges, despite calls led by Amnesty for his release.
In 2007, an Egyptian national was beheaded for allegedly casting spells to try to separate a married couple.
Last year, a Lebanese man facing the death penalty on charges of sorcery, relating to a fortune-telling television programme he presented, was freed after the Saudi Supreme Court decreed that his actions had not harmed anyone.
Amnesty says that Saudi Arabia does not actually define sorcery as a capital offence. However, some of its conservative clerics have urged the strongest possible punishments against fortune-tellers and faith healers as a threat to Islam.
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CBS news
written by CBS/AP Staff
December 12, 2011
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi authorities have executed a woman convicted of practicing magic and sorcery.
The Saudi Interior Ministry says in a statement the execution took place Monday, but gave no details on the woman's crime.
The London-based al-Hayat daily, however, quoted Abdullah al-Mohsen, chief of the religious police who arrested the woman, as saying she had tricked people into thinking she could treat illnesses, charging them $779 per session.
The paper said a female investigator followed up, and the woman was arrested in April 2009, and later convicted in a Saudi court.
It did not give the woman's name, but said she was in her 60s.
The execution brings the total to 76 this year in Saudi Arabia, according to an Associated Press count. At least three have been women.
Her case wasn't the first death penalty for practicing witchcraft. The kingdom follows a strict version of Islamic law that bans sorcery. Though dozens of people are arrested each year for practicing magic, the last known execution before 2011 was of an Egyptian pharmacist convicted in 2007.
Sorcery in Saudi Arabia also made headlines when Lebanese TV psychic Ali Sibat was arrested by Saudi religious police in May 2008 when he made a religious pilgrimage in the country. He sentenced to execution by beheading in Nov. 2009 for similar charges, but reports say he has yet to be executed.
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