Saudi Arabia uses public beheading as punishment for murder, armed robbery, rape, drug trafficking and certain other criminal offences. They are usually carried out with a sword. The condemned are given tranquillizers, then taken by police to a public square after midday prayers. The convicts are brought out of police van barefoot, with shackled feet and hands cuffed behind their back. They are blindfolded, and a sheet of blue plastic sheet laid on the ground.

A police officer leads them to the center of the sheet where they are made to kneel facing Mecca. The convicts' names and crime are read to the crowd by an Interior Ministry official. The executioner is handed the sword by a policeman who swirls it a couple of times to warm up his muscles before slicing-off the convict's head.

In most cases it takes one swing of the sword to sever the head, often sending it flying some two or three feet away. The head is taken to a doctor by paramedics who stops the blood spurting from the neck and reattaches the head to the body. The body is wrapped in the blue plastic sheet that was used in the beheading and burial takes place in an unmarked grave in the prison cemetery.

Saudi Arabia has one of the highest rates of executions in the world. Forty seven( 45 men and 2 women ) people were beheaded in Saudi Arabia in 2002, fifty three( 52 men and 1 woman ) in 2003 and thirty six( 35 men and a woman ) in 2004. The figure shot up in 2005 with 88 men and 2 women executed but went down in 2006 with 35 men and 4 women getting the sword.

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all circumstances, on the grounds that it is cruel, inhuman, degrading and violation of the right to life.

An executioner beheads a man.