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U.S. | 'I comfort death row inmates in their final moments - the execution room is like a house of horrors'

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Reverend Jeff Hood, 40, wants to help condemned inmates 'feel human again' and vows to continue his efforts to befriend murderers in spite of death threats against his family A reverend who has made it his mission to comfort death row inmates in their final days has revealed the '"moral torture" his endeavor entails. Reverend Dr. Jeff Hood, 40, lives with his wife and five children in Little Rock, Arkansas. But away from his normal home life, he can suddenly find himself holding the shoulder of a murderer inside an execution chamber, moments away from the end of their life. 

Saudi beheads two for murder

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Public execution in Saudi Arabia
Riyadh: Saudi authorities on Tuesday beheaded two nationals for murder, including one who stabbed his wife to death and burned her corpse, the interior ministry said.

Ali Mohammad Mahrazi was convicted of stabbing his wife Hunayna Khabrani repeatedly before he “poured kerosene on her body and set it on fire until it was charred,” the ministry said in a statement carried by SPA state news agency.

He then cleared the traces of his crime and complained to police that his wife has disappeared, but a probe revealed that he was the culprit, it said.

He was beheaded by the sword in the southwestern city of Jizan.

In another case, Ahmad Mahmoud Al Yazidi was beheaded in the city of Makkah over shooting dead another man, Eyad Awad Al Yazdi.

The beheadings bring to 72 the number of people executed so far this year in the ultra-conservative kingdom, where 79 people were put to death in 2011, according to Amnesty International.

Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under its sharia, or Islamic law.

Source: Agence France-Presse, November 27, 2012
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