Awdah Ahmad Awdah Salem
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Awdah Ahmad Awdah Salem (unknown date - 7 August 2014) was a Yemeni expatriate responsible for the rape and murder of three Indonesian women in Saudi Arabia.
Biography edit
Salem lived in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, with his wife and children. At one point he was arrested for abusing his wife and children and spent time in jail under a false identity, as he always carried several forged documents in order to pretend to be Saudi.
On 8 September 2007, near the beginning of Ramadan, Salem persuaded an Indonesian maid named Halima to run away with him. The two met on the northern cliffs of Yanbu, where Salem drove her to his guest home, raped her, beat her with a stick and smothered her to death with a pillow. He buried her body in a sand dune, and the crime temporarily went unnoticed.
A year and a half after the murder, Salem saw another Indonesian maid sitting alone in a car park. Salem successfully persuaded her to come with him before raping her, choking her and smashing her skull with a rock. He buried her body near the scene of the crime.
In 2009, Salem noticed a third Indonesian maid near the Al Asyaly footbridge and convinced her to come home with him, despite his family still being at home. After arriving he tried to rape the woman, who ran away. Salem chased after her, stabbed her three times, burned her body in acid and buried the remains.
By this time local police had noticed that one Indonesian maid went missing every year since 2007 and suspected a connection. No leads were found until four months later, when Salem's son was arrested for begging and told police that he had seen his father stab a woman to death. Suspecting he was the killer, police began monitoring Salem until they were eventually able to arrest him for carrying a forged passport, giving them an excuse to search his house. A photograph of Halima, the first victim, was found on his phone, and Salem was interrogated, confessing to all three murders and leading police to the bodies.
Salem was charged with murder and rape: he was also charged with adultery under Sharia law. He was convicted and sentenced to death by beheading. Salem appealed his sentence, but rescinded his appeal after the Supreme Court tried to replace his sentence with death by crucifixion. Salem was publicly beheaded on 7 August 2014, and his head was sown back onto his body so it could be left out as a warning to others.