The government of Saudia Arabia’s headhunters are advertising to fill 8 job openings. I don’t know what the benefits are, but you get lots of cold cuts.
Saudi Arabia is advertising for eight new executioners, recruiting extra staff to carry out an increasing number of death sentences, usually done by public beheading.
No special qualifications are needed for the jobs whose main role is “executing a judgment of death” but also involve performing amputations on those convicted of lesser offences, the advert, posted on the civil service jobs portal, said.
And, yes, the reason is that the beheading biz is really soaring in good, ‘ol S.A. But, as I’ved noted in some posts and on my Facebook page, when ISIS began beheading people big time, decapitation became also attractive to some murderers. After all, word “imprinting” exists for a reason. In Egypt, kids are even playing mock ISIS style headings. But in Saudia Arabia it is the method and tradition, just as Americans long used hangings, firing squads and now the electric chair, gas chambers, lethal injections or legal appeals that can go on for so long that the prison entirely closes.
The Islamic kingdom is in the top five countries in the world for putting people to death, rights groups say. It ranked third in 2014, after China and Iran, and ahead of Iraq and the United States, according to Amnesty International figures.
A man beheaded on Sunday was the 85th person this year whose execution was recorded by the official Saudi Press Agency, compared to 88 in the whole of 2014, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). Amnesty said there were at least 90 executions last year.
Most were executed for murder, but 38 had committed drugs offences, HRW said. About half were Saudi and the others were from Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, India, Indonesia, Burma, Chad, Eritrea the Philippines and Sudan.
The Guardian’s report also adds there’s no stated reason why the executions have increased, but it could be due to the appointment of more judges of the governmnt’s decision to crack down harder on regional problems.
The news has social media all atwitter:
This is just sick: Saudi Arabia advertises 8 new executioner jobs as beheading rate soars. PDF application online. http://t.co/Ux5oTmdLIf
— Eric Vallillee (@EricVallillee) May 19, 2015
Jobs market slow where you are? Saudi Arabia is “recruiting new staff to carry out public beheadings” http://t.co/yoZ9cBfdpB
— Jeremy Vine (@theJeremyVine) May 19, 2015
85 beheadings in Saudi Arabia this year already. When ISIS do it it's (rightly) "sickening barbarity". When SA does it, we send more weapons
— Tommy Ball (@tommy_ball) May 19, 2015
#jobs – Saudi Arabia seeks executioners. Good sense of bloodlust required: http://t.co/JZwhKNyubL pic.twitter.com/nGuY7wqBJD
— Andrew Stroehlein (@astroehlein) May 18, 2015
Calling all sociopaths! Saudi Arabia is advertising for 8 new swordsman executions to cut off people's heads! http://t.co/3lHxtGjg6Q
— Alexander C. Kaufman (@AlexCKaufman) May 18, 2015
And, in case you’re thinking of applying, The Guardian also has this 2003 interview with an executioner who can tell you in detail what the job is really like.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.