Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah has suspended all executions for three months, giving a Filipino worker on death row an unexpected reprieve after his family and the Philippine government failed to meet a deadline to raise compensation money to pay the victim’s family, officials said on Tuesday.
Vice President Jejomar Binay, who is also the presidential adviser on Filipino workers overseas, said a senior Saudi official informed the Philippine embassy in Riyadh on Monday that the Saudi king has postponed all executions, including that of Filipino murder convict Joselito Zapanta, until June 8.
President Benigno Aquino III has written the Saudi king requesting for more time to raise US$1 million demanded by the family of the Sudanese landlord killed by Zapanta in 2009, said Foreign Affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez.
The deadline for raising the money was Tuesday but no execution date has been disclosed, he said.
Hernandez said only US$245,055 has been raised in private and government contributions.
“This is a blessing from God,” Binay said in a statement. “However, this does not mean that the victim’s wife has agreed to extend the deadline for the family of Joselito to raise the ‘blood money’.”
