Saudi Beheads Syrian for Drug Trafficking

Saudi authorities on Tuesday beheaded a Syrian convicted of trafficking a large amount of narcotic pills, the interior ministry said, in the first execution in the kingdom this year.

Mohammed Darwish was arrested "as he was trafficking a large amount of narcotic pills into the kingdom," the ministry said in a statement carried by official news agency SPA.

He was beheaded in al-Jawf province, in the kingdom's north.

Last year, the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom beheaded 76 people, according to an Agence France Presse tally based on official figures.

Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under its strict version of sharia, or Islamic law.