Riyadh: A Saudi national convicted of murder was executed Wednesday, bringing to 73 the number of people put to death in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom this year, the interior ministry said.
Omar al-Rabie was found guilty of shooting to death Ghanem Salem following a dispute, the ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency SPA.
Most people executed in Saudi Arabia are beheaded with a sword.
The executions so far this year include 47 for “terrorism” carried out in a single day on January 2.
In 2015, Saudi Arabia executed 153 people, most of them for drug trafficking or murder, according to an AFP count.
Rights group Amnesty International says the number of executions in Saudi Arabia last year was the highest for two decades. However, the tally was far behind those of China and Iran.
The kingdom has a strict Islamic legal code under which murder, drug trafficking, armed robbery, rape and apostasy are all punishable by death.
Agence France-Presse