Group attacks Saudi over Sri Lankan executions
RIYADH: An international rights group said yesterday four Sri
Lankans beheaded in Saudi Arabia this week for armed robbery suffered a
sham trial and that two of the men may not have known they were
sentenced to death.
The bodies of the four men, beheaded by the sword in a public square
in Riyadh on Monday, were displayed on wooden crosses for over an hour
as a deterrent, amid fears of an increase in organised crime among
expatriates. The kingdom applies strict Islamic law and regularly
beheads murderers, rapists and drug traffickers.
New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), which followed the case,
said it managed to speak to one of the men by telephone several days
before execution, and said they were victims of poverty and arbitrary
justice that denied them legal representation.
"The execution of these four migrants, who had been badly beaten and
locked up for years without access to lawyers, is a travesty of
justice," the group's Middle East and North Africa director Sarah Leah
Whitson said in a statement.
One of the men, Ranjith de Silva, told the group he had been driven
to commit the crimes in 2004 by "financial desperation". He said he came
to the country for work paying 400 riyals per month ($107), but his
employer only paid 250 riyals.
"He claims that at no stage of his arrest, interrogation, detention,
or trial was he ever told that he could see a lawyer," said HRW in the
statement dated February 21 which appeared on the group's Website
yesterday.
It said that during a fact-finding mission to Saudi Arabia in
November, HRW was told that two of the men had been sentenced to 15
years in prison. "Indeed, two of those convicted may have been unaware
that they had been sentenced to death," it said.
The men were not informed of an appeal hearing that took place which
upheld the verdicts.
The Sri Lanka Government made an appeal for clemency in the case,
which has highlighted the plight of millions of migrant labourers in
Saudi Arabia and Saudi fears of social tension.
Saudi Arabia, Thursday, Reuters |
