With Saudi Arabia stepping up execution of condemned prisoners, some of which are carried out in public squares, it has posted advertisements to hire eight more executioners.
According to an advertisement placed on Saudi civil services portal earlier today, no “special qualification” was listed for the job while the main job responsibility included “executing a judgment of death”. The candidate will also be required to perform amputations on those convicted of lesser crimes like theft etc.
In the application for the job of executioner, the jobs were classified as ‘religious functionaries’. However, candidates should not expect to be paid any better than workers in other sectors, with salaries closer to the lower end of the civil services pay scale.
With the beheading of a Pakistani for drug smuggling on Sunday, the total number of executions carried out by the kingdom has reached 84 so far this year, against official count of 88 executions in 2014.
However, the number of people executed in 2014 is highly contested by the Human Rights Watch claiming that the actual number of executions carried out in 2014 was more than 90.
Most of the people executed were convicted for murder, but 38 had committed drugs offences, HRW said. About half were Saudi and the others were from Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, India, Indonesia, Burma, Chad, Eritrea the Philippines and Sudan.
Human rights activist Ansar Burney had said late last year that as many as 50 Pakistanis were awaiting execution of their death sentences.
Though Saudi authorities have offered no explanation on why the number of executions has increased so rapidly, but it has happened after the new king took over the reigns of government.
Saudi Arabia was ranked third in the world for handing out death sentences in 2014, just behind China and Iran.
