Saudi's executioner speaks out

Carol over at American Bedu brought to my attention a chilling – and fascinating – video of an interview with Abdullah Al-Bishi. Al-Bishi is one of a half a dozen or so (no accurate numbers exist) official executioners here in Saudi.

Yes. Executioner. As in he is the guy that beheads people for a living. Or as he calls it, carrying out “Allah’s punishment”.

Serious stuff.

The video is about 10 minutes long and was broadcast by the Lebanese Broadcasting Company. It is also graphic and deeply disturbing. (If I had a parental advisory, I’d put it here.)

It’s nearly impossible not to shiver when Al-Bishi talks about the first time, as a little boy, he witnessed an execution – an execution carried out by his father.

“The moment my father executed the man, I ran to see the digestive system, but all I could see was the man’s head flying. And where the neck used to be, there was a well.”

The young Al-Bishi blacked out, and remembers coming to in the back of his father’s car.

But years later, he was the one doing the beheadings – including, he admits casually, the beheading of many friends.

Equally disturbing is his matter-of-fact answer to the question of whether or not he specialized in beheadings, or does other things, such as cutting off the hands of thieves and such.

“Yes, yes, I carry out the punishment of cutting off thieves hands as well as the cutting off of a hand and a leg on alternate sides, as it is written in the Quran.”

Oh, and by the way, local anesthetic is humanely given to people who get their hands or legs wacked off, but not their heads. Go figure.

One segment of the video has Al-Bishi showing off the tools of his trade – long, fierce-looking and obviously deadly swords with specific and gruesome purposes – this one for horizontal cuts, this one for vertical ones. And yes, his words are accompanied by blood-curdling actions.

Now, I’m not so naïve as to think that there aren’t executioners in other places.

Texas, for example, has executed 423 people since 1974. Executions in Texas have been carried out by lethal injection since 1982, and involve a whole team of executioners. By law, their identities are kept from the public, and they don’t do interviews.

But, back in 2000, Sara Rimer of the New York Times did get interviews and wrote a piece on the executioners at Huntsville Prison in Huntsville, Texas, the prison that has carried out more executions than any other in America.

Throughout the piece, you get the feeling that these men struggle daily with the task of ending a life. They pray about it, they wonder if what they are doing is the right thing, they question their reactions to death and dying and execution. And they suffer what can only be called extreme job anxiety.

"All of us wonder if it's right," notes one of the execution team members. "You know, there's a higher judgment than us. You second-guess yourself. I know how I feel, but is it the right way to feel? Is what we do right? But if we didn't do it, who would do it?"

There doesn’t seem to be any such job anxiety for Al-Bishi, despite his having beheaded more than one hundred people since 1991. (No indication how many hands and legs he’s sliced off in that same time.)

When asked if killing others affects him, Al-Bishi shakes his head.

“If I felt compassion for the person I was executing, he would suffer,” he says. “If the heart is compassionate, the hand fails.

“There is nothing to it,” he adds. “[Beheading another person] is entirely normal.”

Wherever you stand on the death penalty issue, there’s plenty to ponder in the differences.

Here’s the video.