State killings: Saudi Arabia, USA & Victoria

Saudi authorities beheaded a Pakistani in Feb 2014 for smuggling drugs.Photo credit: Newsweek. This article was written by the journalist Phillip Adams and published in The Weekend Australian (27-28 Sep 2014). What has changed since?When it comes to beheadings, ISIS are rank amateurs. In the past year the despotic Saudi Arabian regime has decapitated dozens. Enjoying favoured status as a US ally and provider of the good oil, this brutality has aroused no criticism. In Saudi, you can get the chop for everything from adultery to sorcery and minor drug dealing. We are talking public executions. Beheadings are a popular entertainment.In 1995, Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk reported how 12 women of various South East Asian ethnicities had been executed after callous trials, including a mother and daughter who were beheaded in front of a male audience for murdering the woman’s abusive husband. Last year it was reported that more than 45 foreign maids were on death row in Saudi…