Object Lesson
Agency reports quoting al-Riyadh, a Saudi newspaper, said the four Sri Lankans were executed in a busy market square Monday and their bodies were tied to wooden beams or 'crucified' and put on public display as a lesson to expatriate workers.
"Foreigners in the kingdom are implementing criminal plans made abroad," al-Riyadh had quoted Abdel-Rahman al-Luweiheq, who teaches at the Imam bin Saud University the Reuters news agency said.
In March 2004, four Sri Lankans, Victor Corea, Ranjith Silva, Sanath Pushpakumara and Sangeeth Kumara were arrested for involvement in robbery and possession of firearms and convicted in October of the same year.
Sangeeth Kumara was told that he had been sentenced to a 15-year prison term.
Somalia and Sri Lanka
But Sri Lanka's foreign ministry confirmed this week that Sangeeth Kumara was among those executed by Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile Amnesty International records show that Saudi Arabia had previously executed prisoners who were serving jail sentences, sometimes after they had served them.
In 2006 Amnesty International said six Somali men were executed in April of this year though they had served their prison sentences and had been subjected to corporal punishment.
"Neither they nor their families were aware that they were at risk of execution, and they had not had access to consular or legal assistance," Amnesty International said.
The four Sri Lankans were also convicted without legal representations and did not understand the proceedings until the final stages of their trial when the Sri Lanka embassy provided an interpreter.
Fair Trial
Rights organizations had launched appeals for clemency and Sri Lanka's then president Chandrika Kumaratunga and later Mahinda Rajapakse had sent letters seeking clemency, the foreign ministry said.
Many countries routinely take away convicts from the Saudi Arabian prison with their sentences commuted or to serve them under the laws of their home countries.
Offences such as armed robbery does not carry a death penalty in most countries and Sri Lanka has not carried out the death sentence since 1976 with the head of state commuting the sentence to life imprisonment.
"We have not killed anyone to deserve our heads being cut off," one of the four, Ranjith Silva, told LBO last year.
Amnesty International said 86 men and two women were executed in Saudi Arabia in 2006 and half were foreign nationals.
"The authorities did not disclose the number of death sentences, which may have significantly exceeded those known by AI," the rights body said.
"Defendants in capital cases often do not have legal representation and are not informed of the progress of the proceedings. There was concern that some defendants were convicted and sentenced to death solely or largely on the basis of confessions obtained under duress, torture or deception."
Those executed so far this year include four Sri Lankans, three Pakistanis, two Iraqis, one Nigerian and seven Saudi Arabians including one woman, AI said.
Economic Drivers
About 350,000 Sri Lankans are believed to be working in Saudi Arabia, due to lack of sufficient jobs being created at home.
Sri Lanka has powerful unions and strict labour laws which deter businesses from hiring people the Asian Development Bank and World Bank has warned.
Though more than a million Sri Lankans are working in the Middle East, there are no unions to fight for their rights.
In a survey last year, Sri Lanka was named one of the worst places to do business in South Asia with Maldives being the best place. Many Sri Lankans also go to the Maldives for work.
Sri Lanka's government also prints money to pay for politically popular subsidies driving domestic inflation up and undervaluing the national currency which makes foreign jobs more attractive due to the strength of the currency.
I knew what kind of country it is and I respected it. if you want to committ any criminal act, this is the last place to do it in. These people who were unfortunate enough to suffer under the Saudi Law were too ignorant and just plain stupid.
They may not deserve what they got but what they got was the law of the land. Clear and simple. You commit murder, rape, roberry, kidnapping, rebellion and the punishment is decapitation. When in Rome, do as the Romans do.
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