Saudi Arabia executes 81 people in show of force by an emboldened Moh bin Salman | Hacker News Reader

Saudi Arabia executes 81 people in show of force by an emboldened Moh bin Salman

nbcnews.com

26 pointsmardiyah14 comments

I'm actually afraid of visiting Saudi, even for business. A new woman in the office shared her experience growing up in Saudi (her father worked in oil and gas) in a high end foreign person's compound. schools are in English and women can wear whatever they want. She had an Australian neighbor that made homebrew wine in his basement. He was decapitated. They moved back to Calgary shortly thereafter.

That would scare me. The neighbor was decapitated why?

...that made homebrew wine in his basement It is my understanding that alcohol is a no-no, so that would be my first guess.

For making wine in his basement instead of some other criminal conviction!? I knew they are strict but I didn't imagine it to be that harsh. I've had friends that lived in foreign white collar worker compounds in Saudi and they mentioned that alcohol was common and relatively, discreetly tolerated inside.

This is weird. Making alcohol isn't AFAIK a capital offense even in Saudi Arabia. I would expect some lashing and a high fine accompanied by deportation.

https://www.expatica.com/sa/living/gov-law-admin/rules-and-l...

Drugs would be a different story.

I'm going to be that guy.

Alcohol is a drug, no two ways around it.

Medicinally, yes, but law usually separates those two.

"Medicinally" is the only real definition. Was the law written by pharmacologists?

Distinction made by law is generally arbitrary and based on emotional response to something. If it were otherwise, law would not need to be written to make the distinction.

The people who wrote the laws about drugs were, and still are, incredibly wrong about how things should be structured.

We need to have regulation written involving people who know the minutiae of how the things work that they're regulating, not people who are scared of the word "chemicals" because they don't understand that everything is made of chemicals

It's all bullshit written by clowns and the distinction in law should not be taken seriously. Alcohol is a drug, full stop.

Legislators trying to make this distinction in law are on the same level of stupidity as the time they tried to pass a law on the mathematical constant of pi by way of a bill on squaring a circle

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

From the article: "Despite the incendiary rhetoric that the government used to justify these executions, many charges didn’t merit the death penalty under Saudi law and often didn’t even merit arrest..."

I'm very skeptical that an Australian in a foreign residential compound was decapitated for that. I can't find anything with Google. Isn't alcohol allowed for foreigners in those places? Do you know anymore that you can tell us?

I could see a Saudi Arabian being executed but as other people said it's not a capital offense.

She was a 10 or 12 year old at the time. So her memory of the details would be in question. Notwithstanding, there is data to support that alcohol related offences are punished by execution [1]. They seem to make a difference between production of alcohol within Saudi Arabia and consumption.

[1] https://deathpenaltyworldwide.org/database/#/results/country...

Remove 'emboldenee' from the title. There was a time when journalists actually did news, and not report whatever slant they wanted to appeal with.

It appears to be an op-ed rather than a news story, as it's in the THINK opinion/analysis/essay section rather than the news section. Also note the byline:

> By Abdullah Alaoudh, general secretary of Saudi Arabia’s National Assembly Party, and John Hursh, program director of Democracy for the Arab World Now

It's been a few days and I dont know if anyone will see this... but you're absolutely right. I should have checked the section. It just sort of reads like a news article, atleast for the dirst few paragraphs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com