Saudi Arabia is recruiting eight more executioners as the country's beheadings continue to rise this year, posting an ad for the extra staff members Monday.
According to The Guardian, the government posted a PDF description of the workers, whose main role is "executing a judgment of death," on the civil service jobs portal. The kingdom also said they would perform amputations on those with lesser sentences.
Saudi Arabia is one of the top five countries for inflicting the death sentence. In five months alone the kingdom has so far executed 85 people, compared with the Human Rights Watch count of 88 total last year.
Most of those put to death were convicted of murder, but many of them had drug offenses. Rape, stabbing relatives, apostasy and armed robbery are all punishable by death.
The country's authorities haven't commented on why the death sentences have soared this year, but diplomats speculate the cause may be a backlog of appeal cases, The Guardian said.
