They are forced to kneel facing Mecca, over a blue plastic sheet. According to unconfirmed reports the condemned are given tranquilizers, and taken to a public square after midday prayers. Recent figures suggest that about 100 people per year are beheaded in Saudi Arabia.

According to The New York Times 'doctors watched to limit bleeding and infection during the procedure.' Hands and feet are also reportedly cut off as punishment in Yemen, Sudan, and Somalia. In Iran, in early 2008, five robbers had their right hands and left feet cut off in one week-a practice known as cross amputation. If it is a leg the authorities specify where it is to be taken off, so I follow that.' When I cut off a hand I cut it from the joint. An executioner, Muhammad Saad al-Beshi, told the Saudi newspaper Arab News in 2003 that 'I use a special sharp knife, not a sword. Repeat offenders in the latter country can lose both hands, and legs are sometimes taken for other offenses. Right hands have been cut off at the wrist as punishment for theft in Sharia-controlled areas of Nigeria and in Saudi Arabia. Majid was sentenced to have five drops of hydrochloric acid dripped into each open eye, blinding him. When she refused his advances he poured a container of sulphuric acid over her. In 2005 a 27-year-old man named only as Majid had been stalking a woman, Ameneh Bahrami. The State Department, on its website, still lists eye-gouging as a punishment that can be handed down by courts in Saudia Arabia. It is not clear if the appeal was successful. In Noushad's case, the Indian government made an appeal for clemency. HRW was unable to confirm whether any of the gougings had actually taken place. It was, according to charity Human Rights Watch, the third eye-gouging sentence handed down within a year. Puthan Veettil Abd ul-Latif Noushad was eventually sentenced, in 2005, to have his own right eye gouged out as punishment. In 2003 an Indian citizen working in Saudi Arabia took part in a brawl, wounding a man's eye. But the barbaric punishment is not the only medieval remedy still meted out by courts around the world. An Iranian woman was spared being stoned to death for adultery this week, in response to international outcry.

Cut fingers off