While in Saudi Arabia, my view of the world was what I saw on Saudi television which was an endless string of "news" of members of the royal family going abroad or returning from abroad.
Then, on Thursday nights, Saudi television would show some poor foreigner, who had received the death penalty, re-enact his crime in front of the camera before 'getting the chop' in the city square the following morning. I don't know if this re-enactment is still practised; the beheadings certainly are with at least 158 executions carried out in 2015 and 134 so far this year.
Murder and drug trafficking cases account for the majority of them. Members of Saudi Arabia's vast royal family of more than thirty-thousand are only rarely known to have been executed as the royal family looks after its own. One of the most prominent cases was Faisal bin Musaid al Saud, who assassinated his uncle, King Faisal, in 1975. This year, Prince Turki bin Saud al-Kabir 'got the chop' for murder - read more.
As for Prince Nayef bin Sultan bin Fawwaz Al Shaalan who was convicted in absentia to ten years' imprisonment for smuggling a whole ton of cocaine into France as shown in the above video clip, he's thought to be safe and hiding out in Saudi Arabia.
