Muhammad Hadhad and Abdulmohsin Al-Sabti

Okaz/Saudi Gazette

JEDDAH — The Kingdom’s leading executioner who wields the sword and deals with condemned convicts in Makkah province is not concerned with the new move to use firing squads.



“It won’t put me out of the job,” Muhammad Saad Al-Beshi said in an interview with Okaz/Saudi Gazette.



Al-Beshi said he also knew how to use firearms and could use that skill in executing criminals.



Beheadings are still being carried out, Al-Beshi added.



“I just came back from Raniya Governorate where I carried out a death sentence by the sword, which I’m very good at.”



Al-Beshi has worked as an executioner since 1998 and has trained one of his sons. He said his son has become very good at it because he always took him to the execution square and let him see how the beheading was done. “I taught my son the ins and outs of the work because many neglect learning the skills needed for the job,” he said.



Al-Beshi can behead as many people as necessary in a day. “It doesn’t matter to me: Two, four, 10 — As long as I’m doing God’s will, it doesn’t matter how many people I execute,” he said.



Al-Beshi began working at a prison in Taif where his job was to handcuff and blindfold the convicts before their execution. “I then developed a desire to be an executioner,” he said in an earlier interview.



His first job came in 1998 in Jeddah. “The criminal was tied and blindfolded. With one stroke of the sword I severed his head. It rolled meters away.” Al-Beshi said that of course he was nervous then, as many people were watching, but now stage fright is a thing of the past.



He said he is calm at work because he is doing God’s work. “But there are many people who faint when they witness an execution. I don’t know why they come and watch if they don’t have the stomach for it.”



Before an execution, Al-Beshi goes to the victim’s family to obtain forgiveness for the criminal. “I always have that hope, until the very last minute, and I pray to God to give the criminal a new lease of life. I always keep that hope alive.”



Al-Beshi did not reveal how much he gets paid per execution as this is a confidential agreement with the government. But he insists that the reward is not important. “I am very proud to do God’s work,” he reiterated.



Meanwhile, a specialist forensic doctor at Jeddah Health Affairs said execution by bullets ends a life faster. Dr. Ali Reda noted that some executioners who do not have much experience have to strike the condemned man’s neck with the sword as many as three times before successfully decapitating the head.



Reda said the age and experience of an executioner has nothing to do with how fast one dies after being shot.

It is how and where the firing squad shoots, he said.