British viewers watched their television screens, transfixed. First came the sound of gunshots, and a woman shrouded in black crumpled to the ground. Then a djellaba-clad executioner raised his gleaming sword for the beheading, and a kneeling figure in white was suddenly red with blood. The scene, from a film titled Death of a Princess, re-enacted the double execution in 1977 of a married Saudi Princess, Mashall, 19, and her unmarried commoner lover for having committed adultery. Witnessed by hundreds in a parking lot in Jeddah, the executions were in accordance with the laws of...
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