http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/06/19/saudi_witch_hunt \o Saudi Witch Hunt Saudi Witch Hunt
By Katie Cella 
June 19, 2012 
Foreign Policy 
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/06/19/saudi_witch_hunt
A man named Muree bin Ali bin Issa al-Asiri http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-18503550 \t _blank was beheadedin Saudi Arabia this week after being found in possession of spell books and talismans. Beheading is God's punishment for sorcerers and charlatans, according to a http://www.emirates247.com/crime/region/saudi-steps-up-war-on-sorcery-2012-03-27-1.450545 \t _blank statement that the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice issued in March. 
Al-Asiri's execution was the latest accomplishment of Saudi Arabia's Anti-Witchcraft Unit, an elite police force specifically trained to track down and arrest practitioners of magic. The Anti-Witchcraft Unit was part of a http://www.emirates247.com/crime/region/saudi-steps-up-war-on-sorcery-2012-03-27-1.450545 \t _blank larger campaign to exterminate sorcery from the kingdom which began in 2009 and has included a hotline for reporting witch sightings, raids on suspected houses, and lectures to inform the public about the dangers of magicians -- key causers of religious and social instability in the country, according to the Commission's statement. 
Among other things, the trouble is that magic is a broadly-defined category in Saudi law, as Uri Friedman recently http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/12/13/how_do_you_prove_witchcraft_saudi_arabia explained in FP. It's not unusual for prosecutors in Saudi courts to use witchcraft or sorcery as catch-all labels for all manner of offenses -- and for defendants to use the same terms as excuses -- because the kingdom is swift to mete out punishments for this kind of deviance. 
Because Saudi Arabia does not have a penal code (or a legal definition of witchcraft), it is up to a judge to decide whether someone should be condemned as a witch or a sorcerer. Sometimes all it takes is having a http://www.hrw.org/news/2009/11/24/saudi-arabia-witchcraft-and-sorcery-cases-rise \t _blank book with foreign writing, items that officers of the Anti-Witchcraft Unit don't recognize, or an accuser with a strong vendetta to lose your head as a convicted magician. In al-Asiri's case, his confession to two counts of adultery may have been the original reason for his arrest. 
The Anti-Witchcraft Unit received almost 600 reports of witchcraft in the past few years. Whether or not these are actual cases of people purporting to practice the occult or just a pretext, the government clearly takes the problem seriously.