A woman beheaded in a Saudi street for killing her husband's 6yr old daughter screams her innocence in graphic footage of the execution uploaded to the Internet. An executioner in Mecca, the holy city, took two swings to hack off Layla bint Abdul Mutaleb Bassim's head, after she was found guilty of beating the girl and raping her with a broomstick.
The incident has sparked outrage in the country, but not because of the brutal punishment meted out. Rather Saudis are up in arms that the execution was filmed and posted online, where the woman's family might see it.
Now Saudi authorities have arrested someone for filming the execution, local media reports. But it was not clear what crime he has been arrested for.
The video of Bassim's execution shows how she begged for her life, protesting her innocence right up until the executioner dealt his first blow.
'I did not kill. There is no God but God. I did not kill,' cries Bassim, who is dressed entirely in black and is kneeling on the pavement circled by police officers.
'Haram. Haram. Haram. Haram. I did not kill ... I do not forgive you ... This is an injustice,' she screams in the video, which was posted online on Saturday.
The executioner, dressed in a white robe, forces her to lie down on the ground.
'I did not,' she continues before a final scream as the executioner swings his curved sword into her neck. His first blow fails to sever Bassim's head entirely and he has to swing again before she is decapitated.
A voice then reads out her crime.
It is a traditional execution for the kingdom, which carries out death sentences in public.
Many Twitter users protested the video being circulated on the internet because it could be seen by the woman’s family, but did not object to the beheading itself.
Bassim was one of 10 people beheaded In Saudi Arabia so far this year. Saudi Arabia executed 87 people last year, up from 78 in 2013.
The kingdom had the third-highest number of recorded executions in 2013, behind Iran and Iraq, Amnesty International says.
The official Saudi Press Agency said last week that Bassim's execution came after she was found guilty of the rape and murder of Kalthoum bint Abdul Rahman bin Ghulam Gadir, her husband's daughter. 'Investigations led to her trial which proved she was guilty,' the interior ministry was quoted by SPA as saying.
A United Nations special rapporteur has said trials leading to the death penalty in Saudi Arabia are 'grossly unfair'.
Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking are punishable by death in the oil-rich Gulf state, which is a close ally of Washington and a regular customer of both American and British arms companies.
Saudi authorities identified Bassim as holding Burmese nationality but did not specify if she was from its Rohingya Muslim community. The United Nations describes Rohingya as one of the world's most persecuted minorities.
Buddhist-majority Burma views its population of 800,000 Rohingya as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and denies them citizenship.
Burma's embassy said that without seeing her passport, it could not confirm whether or not she was a citizen.
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