JEDDAH: The Hail rapist has been executed for killing a toddler and sexually assaulting two boys. He was beheaded on Monday morning at the execution square in Hail.
The execution was supposed to take place on Nov. 3 but was delayed.
The General Court in the northern city of Hail sentenced Mohammed Al-Shamarri, a Saudi national, to death after he was found guilty of kidnapping four boys, raping two of them and leaving the youngest, a three-year-old, to die in the desert.
A Court of Cassation threw out an appeal against the sentence.
It was a crime that shook the peaceful community of Hail. The picture of the child’s body in the desert circulated on Internet forums and blogs, causing anger throughout the Kingdom. Residents welcomed the execution, with many saying the man was a bad element eliminated from society.
Yet others criticized the delay in carrying out the sentence. They compared the case to that of the Al-Seli murderer who killed a young boy and his father inside a supermarket in Riyadh in April this year. The killer was executed one month later.
Police launched a manhunt after the 25-year-old father of Mohsen Al-Saadi, the youngest boy, reported him missing. He had told police that he believed a man in a Land Cruiser to be the abductor. The toddler’s dead body was later discovered in a desert.
On Feb. 13 police received another report of a man who abducted a five-year-old boy. The boy was later found alive and unharmed.
On March 5, a seven-year-old boy was abducted, raped and left at the side of a road in Nakbeen village by a man in a white car.
An eight-year-old boy was then found walking on the side of the road with his school backpack. The boy said a man abducted him in his car but later dropped him off unharmed.
