From The Saudi Gazette.

BEIRUT – The lawyer of a Lebanese TV psychic condemned to death for witchcraft by a Saudi court says he will not be beheaded.

The lawyer representing 46-year-old Ali Hussein Subat told The Associated Press that Lebanon’s Minister of Justice had been assured by the Saudi Ambassador to Beirut, Ali Asiri, that the execution would not take place.

Asiri told Okaz, however, that the two countries were continuing to coordinate over the case of Subat, whose death sentence had been overturned in order to “give him the opportunity to repent”.

“We look at the issue from a humanitarian point of view, but we cannot interfere with the rulings of the Kingdom’s judiciary,” Asiri said Wednesday.

Asiri’s comments followed his meeting with Minister of Justice Ibrahim Najjar during which judicial relations between the two countries were discussed along with the drawing up of a bilateral judicial agreement.
Saudi Gazette reported in January that the Court of Cassation in Makkah had overturned the death sentence and that if Subat repented his case would be reviewed by the General Court for a lighter punishment.

“If he does not, the Court of Cassation will approve the death penalty,” a court statement said at the time.

Subat was arrested by the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in Madina in May 2008 and sentenced to death the following November.

He had been in the Kingdom to perform Umrah.

No matter what you think of television psychics, this is scary stuff.

Injury, TV | 5 Comments »