On this date in 2015, in the Islamic holy city of Medina, Saudi Arabia beheaded Indonesian domestic worker Siti Zainab after a very long wait.
Zainab, a maid, was condemned to death in 1999 for stabbing to death her cruel* employer. Her execution went on pause for more than 15 years until all of the victim’s children could reach adulthood and exercise their right to enforce or mitigate the death sentence; still, for all that lead time, Saudi Arabia irked Jakarta by failing to notify consular offices of her impending beheading.
In addition to the usual controversies Saudi Arabia’s aggressive headsmen engender when dispatching the kingdom’s widely abused migrant workers, Zainab’s case raised hackles over the condemned woman’s alleged “suspected mental illness.”
* Cruel according to Zainab and her defenders. Indonesian NGO Migrant Care argued that the murder was outright self-defense.
On this day..
- 1974: Marc Filloux and Manivanh, journalists
- 1683: John Nisbet the Younger
- 2004: Fabrizio Quattrocchi, "I'll show you how an Italian dies!"
- 1725: Maria Romberg, her lover, her maid, and her witch
- 1322: Bartholomew de Badlesmere
- 1922: George Hornsby
- 1950: Eugene LaMoore, the last hanged in Alaska
- Themed Set: Alaska
- 1736: Andrew Wilson, in the Heart of Midlothian
- 1647: Domenica Gratiadei and her coven of witches
- 1965: Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, In Cold Blood subjects
- 1865: Not George S.E. Vaughn
- 1682: Avvakum Petrov, Old Believer