Mick Hartley

A few weeks back, Turkish barber Sabri Bogday was sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia, for supposedly “cursing the name of Allah”:

President Abdullah Gül has joined in the efforts to save Turkish barber Sabri Boğday from execution in Saudi Arabia.

Gül wrote a letter to Saudi King Abdullah and requested a pardon for Boğday. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also said that he contacted Saudi officials to spare Boğday’s life.

Boğday had moved to the Saudi city of Jeddah from the southeastern Turkish province of Hatay, and was running a barbershop. He was arrested by Saudi officials after being accused by his Egyptian neighbor, a tailor with whom he had a brawl, of “cursing the name of Allah.” Saudi authorities condemned him to death, and an appeal case is in progress. Boğday’s family demanded that the president and prime minister intervene to prevent the execution.

I didn’t write about it at the time because it seemed clear enough, given the absurdity of the charges and given President Gül’s intervention, that the man would be pardoned. I was wrong though. This is, after all, Saudi Arabia:

A Saudi Arabian court on Thursday ratified the conviction of Turkish barber Sabri Bogday, who was sentenced to beheading in Saudi Arabia on charges of “cursing the name of God.”

Bogday has been in jail for 13 months in Saudi Arabia after a quarrel with a neighbor near his barber shop. Bogday was accused of cursing the name of God.

More here:

[A]ccording to the World Coalition, a global network representing groups and activists against the death penalty, immigrants are at higher risk of being convicted under Saudi Arabia’s strict execution laws. According to the group’s figures, out of 158 people executed in 2007, 76 were foreigners.

“Saudi Arabian justice is particularly intransigent towards foreign workers and especially those from poor countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, who represent nearly a quarter of the country’s population,” noted the World Coalition.

The group also stated that as a result of their origins, they have little chance of escaping capital punishment. “On occasion, their sentence depends solely on confessions obtained under constraint, torture or subterfuge. Trials take place in secret and the accused and their families are not informed of the accusations against them or the evolution of the procedures concerning them,” the World Coalition stated.