ABC News is reporting that Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar was beheaded in the northern Saudi province of al-Jawf on Monday. A source close to the Saudi's Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, also known as the "religious police," told the Arab newspaper al Hayat that authorities found a book about witchcraft, 35 veils and glass bottles full of "an unknown liquid used for sorcery" among Nassar's possessions. Authorities say Nassar claimed she was a healer and would sell a veil and three bottles of the potion for 1500 riyals, or about $400.
Nassar wasn't the first person executed for sorcery in Saudi Arabia. A Sudanese migrant worker named Abdul Hamid bin Hussein Mostafa al-Fakki was executed on September 21 after being convicted of agreeing to carry out a curse that would cause a man's father to leave his second wife. Like Nassar, he was beheaded by sword, which the Saudis believe to be more humane than death by electrocution or lethal injection.
The topic of sorcery in Saudi Arabia also made headlines in 2008 when Lebanese TV psychic Ali Sibat was arrested by religious police when he dared to make a pilgrimage in the country. He was arrested and sentenced to death by beheading in November 2009 but received a temporary reprieve in 2010. The execution has not yet been carried out.
There is no legal definition of witchcraft in Saudi Arabia, but horoscopes and fortune telling are condemned as un-Islamic practices.
