A human rights group has accused Saudi Arabia of violating international law when it beheaded four Sri Lankan robbers this week and left their bodies on public display in the capital of Riyadh.
Human Rights Watch said the four men had no lawyers during their trial and sentencing, and were denied other basic legal rights. The group called on Saudi Arabia to halt all pending executions and retry those remaining on death row.
"The execution of these four migrants, who had been badly beaten and locked up for years without access to lawyers, is a travesty of justice," Sarah Leah Whitson, the Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said in a report.
"International law only allows states to use the death penalty for the most serious crimes and in the most stringent of circumstances - and neither condition was met in this case," she said.
Beheaded bodies are displayed in Saudi Arabia when there is a specific court order in cases considered particularly offensive.
The four Sri Lankans were convicted of forming a gang that robbed several companies, threatened accountants and workers with weapons and shot one of them and stole his car, said the Saudi Interior Ministry.
Earlier in February, investigators from the New York-based Human Rights Watch had met and spoken to one of the four, Ranjith Silva. According to the group's report, Silva was apparently unaware of his imminent execution and was hopeful for clemency.
Silva said he and Victor Corea, Sanath Pushpakumara, and Sharmila Sangeeth Kumara took up armed robberies in early 2004 because their Saudi employer was paying them each only $67 of the $107 a month agreed in their contract.
Silva also told the Human Rights Watch he was never advised he could see a lawyer, or that he could face the death penalty. The four were not notified of proceedings ahead of time and had no consular assistance.