Number 34

A Saudi man was executed beheaded yesterday for killing another man and his son. The story is a bit odd. Is it missing something, perhaps? [Say, like a proof reader...]

The beheaded man, Ahmad Al-Shamlani Al-Anazi is said to have kidnapped a boy, taken him to a supermarket and then strangled him. The father of the boy, "who was waiting outside" [I thought the boy was kidnapped? how do you kidnap a boy when the boy's own father was there?], "went into the supermarket to look for his son" [maybe a "kidnapping" isn't quite what happened] when the "killer blodgeoned him to death with a heavy metal object." "The killer, who worked at the supermarket, then hid the man's body next to that of his son in the produce department and fled the area." [Okay. So I made-up the part about hiding the two dead bodies in the produce department.] "The murder also threatened to attack police when they tried to arrest him. Police arrested the man inside the supermarket..." Obviously he had not fled too far... From the produce department to the frozen foods section? "A police spokesman... said... the man was in some dispute with the father and killed the boy in retaliation."

Another version of this is here. We learn that the boy was 11-years-old and that the "kidnapping" was more of a "detaining" action with "a malicious intention." The young boy was "strangled... to death wtih a rope." The father of the boy, went "inside the store to look for his son" when the killer "hit him on the head wtih an axe, leaving him lying in a pool of blood." Here is the best part: "Al-Inizi [the beheaded man] was not burried immediately, but his body was put on public display until late Friday evening." Well, alrighty then.

"The body of the man, beheaded by sword, was put on a cross in the Saudi capital Riyadh, state news agency SPA said, quoting the interior ministry." Say, what?!?

True story: When DH was building out house in North Carolina some dozen years ago - he was out at the site working with our then only-four-legged Kid, Baby Sarge [our Rottweiler], when he came across a rattle snake. Not wanting Baby Sarge to have a run-in with the snake, DH took an axe [hatchet, maybe?] to the snake. As a warning to other snakes in the area, DH draped the snake's body over a sawed off tree trunk. Whether or not the other snakes in the area actually took it as a warning as to what could / would happen to them, I have no idea. Personally, I thought it was a bit gruesome, but DH didn't run into another rattle snake...