She was what the authorities call a "mule", an innocent person set up by drug smugglers to carry narcotics. But she was publicly beheaded in the Saudi port city of Jeddah on 25 September.
Occasionally, Saudi authorities have released brief announcements of the execution of women but have never revealed how their sharia courts reached their verdicts, nor why they could find no extenuating circumstances for the instances of husband-murder. Two of the women executed in the Gulf contended - as Sarah Balabagan has done in Abu Dhabi - that their victims had attempted to rape them.
Dozens of expatriate female workers from developing countries have been deported or have fled Gulf states after their employers had beaten or raped them.
The bodies of foreign women beheaded in Saudi Arabia, however, have never been repatriated to their home countries - Saudi authorities routinely refuse to reply to such requests.
Outside the Gulf, women have been largely spared capital punishment, although Jordan hanged a young housewife in November 1993 - the second woman to be executed in the country's history.
Identified as "Tamatheel S", she was taken to the gallows in Sawaka prison outside Amman for allegedly beating her elderly husband to death with a brick and burning his body in kerosene. She was just 26.
The first of the recent female deaths at the hands of the Saudi police was reported by Amnesty International, who say that Zahra Habib Mansur al-Nasser, a 40-year-old Shia Muslim housewife from Awjam in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, was arrested with her husband on the Saudi-Jordanian border in July 1989, with a photograph of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in her baggage.
Both were taken to the Hudaitha detention centre where the woman was reportedly tortured to death by Saudi security men three days later.
Leading article, page 18
The victims
16 January 1993: Rani bint Khamisallah Bishk. Pakistani. Beheaded in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, for allegedly murdering her husband
29 January 1993. Salwa bint Mohamed bin Ali. Saudi of Egyptian origin. Beheaded in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, for allegedly murdering her husband
12 February 1993. Jumua bint Abdul Khaleq bin Mufrih Al-Ghamdi. Saudi. Beheaded in al-Baha, Saudi Arabia, for allegedly murdering her husband
7 May 1993. Leonarda Akula, Filipina. Beheaded in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, for allegedly murdering her employer and his family
7 October 1994. Konti Vidarati Tonotoni. Indonesian. Beheaded in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, along with her husband, for alleged murder
27 March 1995. Fatima bint Abdullah. Saudi. Beheaded in Jizan, Saudi Arabia, for allegedly running a brothel and chewing the mild drug "qat"
13 April 1995. Sithi Mohamed Farouq. Filipina. Executed by firing squad in Ras al-Khaimar, United Arab Emirates, for allegedly killing her employer's child
27 June 1995. Unknown Saudi woman. Beheaded in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for allegedly murdering her stepdaughter
11 August 1995. Laila bint Abd al-Majid bin Al-Hamid and her daughter, Khalud Khalid bin Husain bin Ahmed Al-Naf. Both Saudis. Beheaded in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, for allegedly killing their husband/father
25 August 1995. Rabi bint Mohamed bin Hamed. Nigerian. Beheaded at unknown location in Saudi Arabia for allegedly trafficking in cocaine
25 September 1995. Del Ferouza Delaur. Pakistani. Beheaded in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for allegedly smuggling heroin
The only non-Gulf Arab state to have executed a woman in the past 32 months is Jordan where a 26-year-old Jordanian woman identified only as "Tamatheel S" was hanged at Sawaka prison on 19 November 1993, for allegedly murdering her husband.
