An AFP news agency report quoting the Saudi Press Agency said Monday that Victor Corea, Ranjith De Silva, Santhosh Kumar and Sharmila Sangeeth Kumar were executed for robbing businesses at gunpoint.

But according to family members of the executed and rights organizations, Sangeeth Kumar was not even on death row.

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.

They were convicted in October of the same year.

Fair Trial?

The prisoners protested that they were convicted without legal representation and proceedings were conducted in a language they did not understand and without calling witnesses.

The first three were told by Saudi officials that they were sentenced to death and Sangeeth Kumara was told that he was on a 15-year sentence.

Before his execution Ranjith Silva told LBO that the three were given documents in Arabic to sign, which they later learnt were statements accepting their sentence. Only de Silva refused to sign.

After their conviction Amnesty International and the Asian Human Rights Commission launched several appeals for clemency.

Kumara and his family did not know that he was on death row, and relatives are still awaiting clarification.

Human rights organizations did not include Sangeeth Kumara in their appeals because he was simply sentenced to a prison term.

Crime and Punishment

The Asian Human Rights Commission noted that the prisoners were being given death sentences for alleged crimes that do not carry such heavy penalties elsewhere, including the prisoners home country.

"We have not killed anyone to deserve our heads being cut off," de Silva told LBO last year using a smuggled mobile phone, when his mother appealed to President Mahinda Rajapakse to intervene on behalf of her only son in a family of five and his friends.

Pushpakumara told LBO last year that he is yet to see his child who was born after he left for Saudi Arabia.

Passport Protection

The prisoners urged Sri Lankan authorities to intervene each time high level delegations from other countries came and took away inmates to serve sentences under the laws of their home countries.

In 1998, in a well publicised case Saudi Arabia commuted the death sentence of two British nurses, Lucille McLauchlin and Deborah Parry who were accused of murdering a colleague.

Their sentence was commuted and they were allowed to return to Britain on paying blood money to the relatives of the deceased.

"Most people who get on the wrong side of Saudi law do not have the advantages of international media interest or legal assistance," Britain's The Observer newspaper said sometime later.

Amnesty International said in mid 2006, that two thirds of those executed in Saudi Arabia were foreign nationals.

Two weeks before his execution de Silva said he had started to write a book and would soon be seeking help to get it published.

Last year worker remmittances brought 2.3 billion dollars to Sri Lanka. At least 350,000 Sri Lankan are estimated to be working in Saudi Arabia.

(Updated)