Saudi Executes Murder Convict

Saudi authorities on Monday beheaded a citizen in the eastern city of Qatif after he was convicted of killing a compatriot, the interior ministry said.

Ali al-Faraj shot dead Khaled al-Baden during a dispute, the ministry said in a statement published by the official SPA news agency.

The execution was the fifth carried out this year in Saudi Arabia, which beheaded 78 people in 2013, according to an Agence France Presse count.

Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under the conservative kingdom's strict version of Islamic sharia law.