Last year on this date, to the impotent howls of human rights groups, five men were beheaded in Jizan, Saudi Arabia and then “crucified.” “In Saudi Arabia, the practice of ‘crucifixion’ refers to the court-ordered public display of the body after execution,” Amnesty UK noted, “along with the separated head if beheaded. It takes place in a public square to allegedly act as a deterrent.”

Here’s how these five deterred. If you look closely you’ll see the “along with the separated heads” bobbing near each decapitated corpse in little white bags … and if you’re still not convinced, click for a ghastly higher-quality close-up view.

Image via Twitter (see e.g. here, here, and here.

Jizan is a city being developed as a deep water shipping depot by Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia’s extreme southwest corner near Yemen; this was the ethnicity of the executed men as well. According to the Saudi Interior Ministry, brothers Khaled, Adel and Qassem Saraa as well as Saif Ali al-Sahari and Khaled Showie al-Sahari comprised a gang who carried out robberies in various different cities. They beat and strangled to death at least one man.

As an inducement to more legitimate folk to stay on the straight and narrow, the quintuple gibbet evidently graced the environs of Jizan’s university. Study hard, lads.

A sixth and unconnected Saudi was also beheaded on the same date in the nearby city of Abha.

On this day..

• 1559: Spanish Protestants at Valladolid
• 1832: Elizabeth Jeffery, Carluke poisoner
• 1525: Jäcklein Rohrbach, for the Weinsberg Blood Easter
• 1521: Xicotencatl Axayacatl, Cortes fighter
• 1650: James Graham, Earl of Montrose
• 1912: Rev. Clarence Richeson, minister, madman, and murderer
• 1940: Cayetano Redondo, former mayor of Madrid
• 1484: Olivier le Daim, diabolical barber
• 1894: Six anarchists in Barcelona
• 1997: Bruce Edwin Callins, in the machinery of death
• 1894: Emile Henry, because there are no innocent bourgeois
• 1425: Parisina Malatesta and Ugo d'Este, for incest