SAUDI ARABIA: MAN BEHEADED FOR MURDER

Saudi Arabia beheaded a man convicted of murder, the interior minister said in a statement, just two days after the UN expressed alarm at the scale of executions in the kingdom.
Jahaz al-Baqmi, who was executed in the southern Saudi city of Taif, was convicted of stabbing a man to death, according to a ministry statement released by the official SPA news agency, bringing the number of executions carried out in 2012 to four.
On January 6, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights voiced alarm at the almost threefold increase in executions in Saudi Arabia last year.
"We are alarmed at the significant increase in the use of the death penalty in Saudi Arabia in 2011," said spokesman Rupert Colville at a regular press briefing.