US-based Human Rights Watch called on Saudi Arabia to lift a death sentence against a 14-year-old Egyptian boy convicted of murder.
"Executing one child for the killing of another would only compound the tragedy," Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement received yesterday.
"King Abdullah should uphold Saudi Arabia's international legal obligations by commuting this death sentence."
It said the boy, named only as Ahmad, had been sentenced for killing a three-year-old Egyptian also living in Saudi Arabia in a "seriously flawed trial". He is being held at a juvenile detention centre in Dammam.
It said the parents of the dead boy refused to accept "blood money" -- a compensation which families of victims can accept under Islamic law.
Saudi Arabia, which implements strict Islamic sharia law, executes convicted murderers, rapists and drug traffickers, usually by public beheading with a sword.