http://walrusmagazine.com/print/2009.05-field-notes-chop-chop-square/

Chop Chop Square
Inside Saudi Arabia’s brutal justice system

by Adam St. Patrick

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A slender sword — four feet of shining steel, curved at the end — hovers high above a kneeling figure shrouded in white. Only the kneeler’s neck is exposed. Sixty or so men watch from the edge of a granite courtyard, behind a patchy line of eight soldiers in tan uniforms. The man wielding the sword looms high, almost spectral, in a flowing white dishdasha and a red-checked headcloth. He is ready to swing but then steps back. He huddles with two police and the one person who can make this stop: the victim of the crime that’s being punished.

The huddle breaks, and the executioner retakes his position, left of the condemned. He sets his right leg forward and his left leg back, as if about to stretch his left calf. Sunlight flashes on the blade as he draws it above his head.

This is Saudi Arabia, one of the last places on earth where capital punishment is a public spectacle. Decapitation awaits murderers, but the death penalty also applies to many other crimes, such as armed robbery, rape, adultery, drug use and trafficking, and renouncing Islam. There’s a woman on death row now for witchcraft, and the charge is based partly on a man’s accusation that her spell made him impotent. Saudi Arabia executed some 1,750 convicts between 1985 and 2008, yet reliable information about the practice is scarce. In Riyadh, beheadings happen at 9 a.m. any given day of the week, and there is no advance notice. There is also no written penal code, so questions of illegality depend on the on-the-spot interpretations of police and judges.

What’s certain is that the Koran guides the justice system, with some laws passed to address areas the holy book does not. The Saudi interpretation of the Koran discourages all forms of evidence other than confessions and eyewitness accounts in capital trials, on the theory that doing otherwise would leave too much discretion to the judge. But at any time until the sword strikes, a victim’s family can pardon the condemned — usually for a cash settlement of at least two million riyals ($690,000 or so) from the convict or his family.

In rare cases, often politically sensitive ones, King Abdullah grants a pardon, one of the last hopes for Canadian national Mohamed Kohail, now twenty-four,who faces beheading after being convicted for the murder of a Syrian youth during a schoolyard brawl in Jeddah. His younger brother Sultan, who reportedly instigated the fight by insulting a Syrian girl, could also face the death penalty, as his case has been transferred to an adult court on appeal. Allegedly, Mohamed was told that if he signed a document stating that he punched the victim in the stomach, he would be freed. Many who live to recount their experience in the Saudi justice system report that police promised freedom in exchange for a confession — or tortured them to get one.

In Riyadh, beheadings take place in a downtown public square equipped with a drain the size of a pizza box in its centre. Expatriates call it Chop Chop Square. I showed up at 9 a.m. most days for several weeks. After arriving at the barren granite expanse for yet another morning, I’d drink tea with merchants in the bazaar next door. Popular opinion seems to allow more respect for the executioners than sympathy for those wrongfully convicted, and rumours about the mysterious swordsmen abound. “He must kill,” one carpet dealer told me. “If he doesn’t kill for a few days, they give him a sheep to kill.” The job is a coveted one, often passed from father to son. In a Lebanese TV clip now on YouTube, a Saudi executioner shows off his swords and describes his approach: “If the heart is compassionate, the hand fails.”

Still, the process is less overtly public now than it once was. Corpses aren’t hung for display in the square as often, and beheadings drew much bigger crowds when they were a regular event, held on Fridays after noon prayers. No formal event or fanfare begins or ends them now, and nothing indicates awareness or concern about how alien this is to outsiders.

At 8:55 a.m. on a Monday morning, I arrive at Chop Chop Square for my regular check-in. In the middle is a police car, a yellow van, and the executioner in a crisp white dishdasha. Despite all I’ve learned in the past two weeks, what is about to happen still seems impossible.

At 9 a.m., the executioner gently lowers the blade to jab at the condemned’s neck, which jerks the prisoner’s body to attention. Then the real blow: the blade is drawn high up, then swung back down. It cleaves skin, muscle, and bone with a hollow, echoing thud. A lurid crimson waterfall chases the head to the granite with the sound of a wet rag being wrung out over a stainless steel sink. The body sways forward, snaps up, and slumps off to the right.

The executioner wipes his blade with a white cloth that he then tosses away. It flutters in small arcs as two men in blue jumpsuits descend from the yellow van, hoist the body, and lay it on a stretcher. One grabs the head by the cloth tube that covers it. A loudspeaker lists the decapitated man’s crimes: rape, drug trafficking, and possession. The executioner sheathes his sword. A thickly bearded soldier claps his hands and wipes them against each other in the air — that’s it. By 9:05, the only other person in Chop Chop Square is a janitor, hosing down the granite.

- Published May 2009


© 2009 The Walrus Magazine

Religion is just super.

'Would be nice if america embraced this.
Except for the religion thing

Very cosmopolitan.

How do you know it wouldn't be the stupid people doing the beheading?

The Suadi's don't fuck around with executions

Take off your burka, lady?

Chop-Chop, Janine!

Yes, I often look forward to beheadings when at the Vatican or in Salt Lake City. It really makes me feel closer to God.

The Vatican conducted enough executions that Islam is still trying to catch up!

My step-brother was stationed in Saudi Arabia for a while;  He's told me about "chop-chop square".  He said that they would push Americans to the front so they could have a better view.  He saw beheadings, and women being stoned.  He said women were handcuffed to a post, and a dump truck of rocks emptied on her.

I'm all for capital punishment for the appropriate crimes, murder/rape/treason being the primaries, but executions carried out by the state should be as dignified, clean, and painless as possible.  Messy is just that, messy.  The death of the guilty is the goal, not a friggin roman spectacle, we're not barbarians.

For one, if it worked, why are people still doing 'stupid' stuff in SA?

Next, you should realize that anything or anyone is considered stupid by someone.

While we are at it we should stone women, go back to the monarchy system, beat and kill people for normal human behavior and take a fucking shit on the bill of rights.  Long live the U.S.A.

The Middle East is one massacre after another.  Its legacy is a burnt city, screaming tortured children and a history of the  slaughter of the innocent.

Its religions its spawned have tortured and raped all across the Earth.  

Indeed it did. I am not Catholic and I am in no way trying to state that the Vatican does not have a history of blood. But, I don't think that you'll see a yellow van and swordsman sitting in the middle between the carts of plastic saints and rosery's.

"There’s a woman on death row now for witchcraft, and the charge is based partly on a man’s accusation that her spell made him impotent"

O'rly?

So an eyewitness account trumps DNA or other forensic evidence in SA? And then based on this "evidence" you are publicly decapitated or stoned? Fucking backwards barbarians.

Yes, because their religious law says so.

Fucking backwards theocratic barbarians, without a doubt.

Which is worse?  The Saudi method, or the Chinese death vans, where they dump some chemicals into your bloodstream and then carve out your organs to sell?

"If you have to shoot, shoot!  Don't talk!"

One thing for certain, there will be no repeat offenders. Really get tired of reading about some guy whose rap sheet is the size of the LA Yellow pages yet is still out raping and pillaging. Or some a..hole serving life without parole running street gangs from prison. And of course they are supported by those that think capital punishment is never justified. Never, right up until it is them or one of their loved ones who are the victims of these revolving door thugs. Funny how one's opinions change drastically when YOU are the victim. Might always be candidates for this sort of approach as such is the human condition, but if they keep after it the numbers will be far less than they are here in our jellyfish society.

yeah...we Christians do this all the time.

Yes, religion makes the world such a peaceful place.

This one's gonna end well I see.

You know there's more than one kind of religion, right?

Canadian national my ass. Prolly a Saudi who got birthed there so his parents could get him dual citizenship. (Anchor baby)
Weren't some of the 9-11 highjackers Americans technically? He probably spent 3 weeks in Canada in diapers then went back to the magic kingdom. He aint no Canuck. Anyone who goes to these effed up countries for ANY reason takes his own life in his hands.

I have no problems with beheadings for the right reasons- murder, torture, maiming children

To all the dickheads that support this in the US:

Read the 8th amendment.

Thankfully, the 8th Amendment keeps notions like this from ever seeing the light of day.

Burning witches is my favorite.

A good time was had by all during the Inquisition.

I was wondering what ever happened to Rosie O'Donnell.

yipper

I think you're the one that left them all in one lump.

Reminds me of this.

Why do you oppose beheadings?

Cruel and unusual punishment.

Oh gee, I don't know.

Is really cruel and unsual to execute certain criminals that way?

yeah and your ancestors owned slaves, right? Moron!

It doesn't stop em over there apparently.



 

Well golly gee mister, I just don't know. Can we cut their genitals off first? Maybe get it on pay per view, to help pay for budget deficits?



Let's brainstorm and pretend we're not a Constitutional Republic.

The difference is culture

There you get beheaded for being a homosexual or a "witch"

Here you get lethal injection for cutting a persons balls off and setting them on fire

eye for an eye

And just what do you thnk was the approved method of execution when the 8th was penned by our founding fathers?  To take your position, as is being done through the courts as we speak, ANY means of execution can be deemed "cruel and unusual" in today's limp wristed society.

Lethal injection actually

It's NOT a deterrant, it's a punishment. And it sure puts an end to repeat offenders.

WTF happened to crowd participation? That's no fun!

Well if you want to play that game you can say they are all trying to catch up to the Jews. They have an extremely genocidal past. Right along with stoning to death people who worked on the Sabbath and killing unruly children.



BUT you see where this is going if we play that game. Are we gonna do our best to offend or condemn  all people here because of a cultures past?



All religions and cultures have a shady past unfortunately. Its human nature, not religion that makes people evil. Religion is just but an excuse they use in an attempt to justify it.





 

damn it, I thought it was a video link....