Saudi Arabia Advertises For 8 Beheaders

Jihadi John and other blood-thirsty members of the Islamic State, or IS, may be interested in a job opening posted by Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Civil Service. The Middle Eastern kingdom is seeking applicants for eight executioners.

Their task, according to the New York Times, is to carrying out the death sentence based on a legal decision by an Islamic Shariah Court. That means decapitating or beheading in a public square convicted criminals. These are the drug dealers, arms smugglers, murderers and others who have been involved in violent crimes.

However, unlike the IS which engages in beheading of political prisoners, Saudi Arabia require a decision by a Shariah Court. But because of the blood-curling nature of the job, which requires no specific skills or educational background, qualified decapitators or beheaders are scarce in the kingdom.

The ministry warned that due to an anticipated increase in number of executions, the eight executioners would like face a busy beheading season. Just to give the applicants an idea of how many criminals they need to decapitate, Saudi Arabia had executed 85 persons in 2015 just barely five and a half months into the year.

In contrast, the kingdom executed 88 people in 2014. The 85^th person, a drug convict, was executed on Sunday. Almost 45 percent, or 38 of the convicts executed in 2015 were for drug offences, reports Human Rights Watch researcher Adam Coogle.

The job vacancies, posted on Monday, did not state the salary for the position. However, the New York Times noted that in the province of Qassim, located north of capital city Riyadh, the beheader also works full time as a guard for the prince, but is given a $1,000 bonus for every head that he decapitates.

While there is a growing global push against capital punishment, it is a decision made by governments despite the general opposition to it like what happened when Indonesia recently executed by firing squad seven convicted drug smugglers. The uproar, though, is greater when the execution method is by decapitation and when done publicly like what IS does.

That’s because beheading is considered a barbaric form of punishment, although Discovery News points out that it was a preferable form of execution during the past centuries compared to burning alive or disembowelment which are more painful methods, while decapitation often provides swift death. But there are instances when it took more than one blow to separate the head from the body.

Anti-death penalty groups emphasise that there is no clean, painless or humane way to execute a person based on recent experiences in the US when lethal injections went awry and caused the death row convict to endure prolonged suffering before dying.

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