RIYADH: Saudi Arabia has executed an Indian man for smuggling heroin and flogged 12 teenage boys in public for harassing women, Saudi media reported on Sunday.
The youths were given 15 lashes each for "flirting and bothering families" at a park designated for families in the conservative Muslim kingdom, al-Eqtisadiah newspaper said.
Police flogged the youths immediately after catching them in the park in the resort of Taif. The boys had entered the enclosure by scaling the walls.
Saudi Arabia's strict implementation of Islamic sharia law bans unrelated men and women from mixing before marriage. The paper did not make clear when the floggings happened.
In a separate case an Indian man was beheaded on Sunday for smuggling an unspecified amount of heroin into the kingdom, the official Saudi Press Agency said.
The execution in the eastern Khobar province raised to at least 27 the number of people put to death in the Gulf Arab state this year.
Drug smugglers, murderers and rapists are usually executed by public beheading. At least 75 people were executed in the country last year and 121 in 2000.
Other punishments in the kingdom include stoning for adultery and flogging for relatively minor crimes including alcohol consumption.
On the bright side at least some of them go in for fucking camels.