SANAA, July 07: A Yemeni man was executed by firing squad in a public square yesterday after being convicted of raping and murdering a boy last year. Yahia Al-Raghwa, 22, was found guilty of raping and murdering Hamdi Abdullah, 11, at his barber shop in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, last December. He was shot by a firing squad in a public square in the capital, in the presence of hundreds of people including the family of the victim.
Pictures by the Yemen news agency showed the barber lying face down on a large piece of red cloth, his hands bound behind him, as a Yemeni police official stood over him with what appeared to be a machine gun. According to the news agency, SABA, the barber was arrested in December 2008 and confessed during a January trial to raping the boy inside his salon, killing him and cutting his body to pieces before dumping it outside Sanaa.
The execution brings to five the total number of people put to death this year in the impoverished southern Arabian peninsula country, according to an AFP count. Yemen’s penal code is based on sharia, or Islamic law. At least 15 people were executed in Yemen in 2007 according to a 2008 report by the London-based watchdog Amnesty International. Figures for 2008 are not available.
–Agencies–