Muhammad al-Maghrabi, 41, year old man
Who was convicted of raping and murdering a three-year-old girl has been executed in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Monday in front of hundreds of onlookers.
This is the first public execution there since 2009.
“Security was very tight, because authorities were fearing a revenge attack by armed men from the Bani Matar tribe to which the girl’s family belong,” said Reuters photographer Khaled Abdullah who witnessed the scene.
The police van transporting Muhammad al-Maghrabi, 41, to Sanaa’s Tahrir Square was escorted by five police patrol vehicles.
The execution drew a large number of onlookers, some perched up telegraph poles and many watching from rooftops.
The crowd started to shout “Allah is the greatest” when Maghrabi arrived.
“The man was escorted from the van to the middle of the square, and then the place turned to a complete chaos.
“He tried to talk to the executioner, a police officer who was calmly smoking a cigarette as he stood next to him before pointing his AK-47 to his back from a very close distance.
“Soon he fired around four shots, and people realized that it was done, they rushed to the place and tried to take the body, but the police were able to take the body to the van and drove through the crowd out of the square.”
