Manama: Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence against two men for their role in the killing of four French nationals eight years ago near the ruins of Madain Saleh.
All the court judges approved the death verdict against the first defendant while most of them endorsed the death ruling against the second defendant, Saudi daily Okaz reported on Tuesday.
The four victims were among nine French nationals working in Saudi Arabia who were on a desert trip to the west of the country when they were fatally shot on February 26, 2007. Two men were killed instantly and the other two died later in hospital.
An Interior Ministry spokesperson at the time said gunmen in a car fired at a group of nine French nationals after stopping them near Medina
The nine were part of a larger group of 26 people reportedly from three families that split into two, with some of the members returning to the capital Riyadh while others went ahead with their trip.
The case was reviewed by the Special Criminal Court in Riyadh in January last year and judges sentenced the first and second defendants to death and 12 other defendants to jail terms.
According to the case documents, the first defendant, alongside the leader of the terrorist cell who was killed later in a confrontation with the police, stalked the French contractors and fired six shots from his Kalashnikov at three of them, wounding them.
The defendant had also planned to carry out terrorist attacks in other areas of the kingdom and was involved in acts of sabotage targeting foreigners, the case documents said.
The second defendant was found guilty of close association with the leader of the terror cell.
He participated alongside the first defendant in monitoring the moves of the French nationals and helping him and the cell leader in the attack by driving the car that transported them to the site where they committed their crime, the court said.
He was also charged with hiding wanted terrorists and helping them escape the police and planning to take them out of the country to Iraq.
The defendant had three unlicenced machine guns, two bombs and ammunition that he planned to use to undermine security in the kingdom, the papers said.
The jail terms against the other defendants ranged from three to 23 years and were based on the charges of hiding wanted terrorists and providing funds for acts of terrorism.