Saudi Arabia Executes Seven Men Despite UN Appeal for Clemency
THE GUARDIAN: Human rights activists say men were executed by firing squad, but country's official news agency says they were beheaded

Saudi Arabia has executed seven men for an armed robbery, the interior ministry said, despite an appeal for clemency by United Nations human rights investigators.

The seven, some of whom were under 18 when the crime was committed in 2006, had been due to be put to death last week but were granted a stay of execution while authorities reviewed their case.

Human rights activists in Saudi Arabia said they had been executed by firing squad, but the country's official news agency said they had been beheaded. The original sentences called for death by firing squad and crucifixion.

The men, from Asir province in the south of the country, were convicted of robbery and theft. » | Agencies in Riyadh | Wednesday, March 13, 2013

‘The Firing Squad, Please,’ Says Prisoner
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Ronnie Lee Gardner had a quarter-century to ponder his choice, whether to die by lethal injection or take four bullets in the heart.

In a Utah courtroom Friday, 25 years after he was sentenced to death for killing a man during an escape attempt, he declared his preference to the judge: “I would like the firing squad, please.”

With Mr. Gardner’s appeals apparently exhausted, Judge Robin W. Reese of Third District Court in Salt Lake City signed a warrant of execution and scheduled it for June 18. >>> Erik Eckholm | Friday, April 23, 2010

Execution of Bali Bombers Divides Victims’ Families
THE SUNDAY TIMES: The three Islamic militants convicted of the Bali bombings of 2002, in which 202 people including 24 Britons died, were executed by an Indonesian firing squad last night on a prison island south of Java.

Two military helicopters stood by to airlift the corpses to the men’s home villages, where their wives and 13 children awaited their funerals.

The executions went ahead after lawyers for the men exhausted all legal avenues for appeal and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono declined to grant clemency.

The men spent their last months in a maximum security jail on the prison colony of Nusa Kembangan, surrounded by snake-infested swamps.

Late last night they were led out through a thick steel door and past the white walls and barbed wire of the jail to three execution posts driven into the earth. A firing squad from the mobile brigade of the Indonesian police had been ready for months to carry out the sentences.

British relatives of the victims were sharply divided by last night’s executions. >>> Michael Sheridan and Abul Taher | November 9, 2008

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD: Torrent of Rage

INDONESIA is on high alert for terrorist attacks and mob violence, fearing radicals will take revenge for the execution of the three Bali bombers.

As hundreds of extremists gathered in the bombers' home villages in East and West Java for the funerals yesterday, there were two hoax bomb threats against the Australian Embassy and Indonesia's anti-corruption watchdog, the KPK. The threats were an indication of the widespread resentment towards foreigners, and Australians in particular, after the executions.

The Rudd Government stepped up its warnings to Australians about the dangers of travel to Indonesia and Bali.

"We continue to have credible information that terrorists may be planning attacks in Indonesia," the Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, said.

Mr Smith pleaded with school leavers planning a last hurrah in Bali, to reconsider, although there was no change to the department's travel warning.

He also said Australia would soon co-sponsor a resolution in the United Nations General Assembly calling for a moratorium on capital punishment. "We urge countries who continue to apply capital punishment not to do so," he told ABC Television just hours after the executions. >>> Tom Allard in Tenggulun and Lisa Murray in Jakarta | November 10, 2008

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