The Execution
Khamis Mushayt, Saudi Arabia. January 27, 1995.
Friday morning prayers emanating from the mosque loudspeaker seemed to drone on forever. There were many extra worshippers this morning and they spilled out into the town square, bent in prostration towards Mecca.
My wife, Kathy, and I were perched in a second-floor restaurant overlooking the square, not to observe morning prayers, but to witness a public execution. The man sentenced to die in a few minutes would be one of 191 executions in 1995, still a morbid yearly record for Saudi Arabia.
At a party the night before, a private contractor friend working at King Khalid Air Base shared that an execution had been announced for the next morning after prayers. Did we want to go? Over the years, there were stories told of Westerners being hauled down in front of an execution for the shock value. We didn’t debate the morality or potential front-row seat. We’re in.
We parked several blocks away from the square and commandeered a table by the windows in the restaurant. As the restaurant filled with Saudi and other Middle Eastern men, I surreptitiously snapped a few photos of the scene outside. During the execution, I set the camera on the table. Maybe, I didn’t want to risk the potential ire of the locals. Maybe, it was the heartlessness of including a life-ending moment in a travel slideshow to friends.
A Saudi standing next to us spoke English and told the story behind the execution.
The condemned man shot and killed his father about a year earlier. The victim’s family is allowed to choose the punishment and can be “eye for an eye” or payment of “blood money.” Since it was his own family, there was but one choice. They chose death by gun, instead of the customary beheading by sword. It’s not only murder that gets the death penalty in Saudi Arabia. You can be executed for practicing witchcraft, renouncing Islam, even adultery.
Down below the prayers had ended. The square had been cordoned off by 100 policemen and ringed with 5000 onlookers. Small groups stood in the back of Datsun and Toyota pickups, others climbed onto engine hoods and roofs of the unfortunate cars parked too near the square. On the street, they pushed and shoved for a better view. Policemen muscled the crowd aside to make way for an ambulance and several police cars to squeeze into the square. The vehicles stopped short of a large pile of sand dumped on the tarmac.
The back doors of the ambulance flung open and the condemned was pulled out by two orderlies. Handcuffed and hooded in all-white clothing, he stumbled to a spot near the sand pile and pushed to his knees. He was drugged to ensure a passive submission to his fate. The crowd became eerily silent, not even a murmur.
A huge man wearing the traditional Arab thobe and red-checkered ghutra appeared from behind the ambulance. With long, rapid strides, the executioner approached the prisoner, swung a long gun around from his back, and “BOOM!”, a shot to the head. A doctor (at least dressed like one) rushed to the man, listened to his stethoscope for half a minute, and shook his head side-to-side. Had the penalty been decapitation . . . well, no additional confirmation would be necessary. The executioner re-approached the slumped over prisoner and a second “BOOM!” echoed around the square.
This time there was no checking vital signs. The orderlies hurriedly dragged the man back to the ambulance and threw him inside. The executioner jumped into a police car and the vehicles sped off, sirens blaring.
As surreal as that previous 90 seconds had been, what happened next seemed even more bizarre.
Within seconds, the silent crowd erupted into a raucous frenzy. Hundreds raced to the sand pile, jumped on it, and threw sand in the air. Picture your favorite team winning a momentous game and the fans rushing the field. This was no game. A man’s life had just ended in a brutal public demonstration of Shariah law. Because it came so unexpectedly, the crowd’s bloodlust shocked me more than the execution.
Like a snap of the fingers, it was over and we beat a hasty retreat out of the restaurant. I don’t recall any specific conversation during the drive back to the housing compound. Likely, we were mostly quiet, privately contemplating the magnitude of the experience. It didn’t register with me until later that Kathy was the only female in the crowd of thousands that morning.
I can make no judgments right now. One must accept a society, so different from our own, as it is – not what you think it should be.
Brad Latzke – post-execution note to mother