On this date in 2016, Saudi Arabia had Prince Turki bin Saud al-Kabir beheaded: the first royal executed in the kingdom since 1975.
Prince Turki was convicted of shooting to death a friend named Adel bin Suleiman bin Abdulkareem Al-Muhaimeed during a 2012 brawl outside Riyadh.
Victims’ families have the right to pardon condemned criminals in Saudi Arabia, but Adel’s family refused repeated offers of diya (blood money) from the royal relatives up to the very last moment.
“The greatest thing is that the citizen sees the law applied to everyone, and that there are not big people and other small people,” Abdul-Rahman al-Lahim, a prominent Saudi lawyer, wrote on Twitter.
On this day..
- Feast Day of Saint Justus
- 1769: Six at Tyburn, "most of them, sir, have never thought at all"
- 1942: The Jews of Trunovskoye
- 1769: Six felons at Tyburn, keeping away thoughts of death
- 1862: Ten Confederate hostages in the Palmyra Massacre
- 1943: Antoni Areny, the last executed in Andorra
- 1940: Hans Vollenweider, the last guillotined in Switzerland
- 1749: Bosavern Penlez, whorehouse expropriator
- 1985: Benjamin Moloise, revolutionary poet
- Themed Set: Illegitimate Power
- 1470: John Tiptoft, Butcher of England
- 1672: Thomas Rood, the only incest execution in America
- 31: Sejanus, captain of the Praetorian Guard