KUWAIT: A Kuwaiti woman convicted of murdering her friend was saved from the gallows early on Thursday after a last-minute pardon by the victim’s relatives as authorities executed six male convicted murderers in the first hangings in the country in two years. The hanged men included two Kuwaitis, three Iranians and a Pakistani. Some of the men were on death row for as long as five years.

Two hours before the woman was supposed to be hanged, relatives of the victim pardoned her before the police, accepting blood money. The public prosecutor then halted the execution. The woman was convicted of premeditated murder of her female friend at the victim’s house by stabbing her several times after having breakfast together. The reason for the murder was not revealed.

Two of the Iranians hanged were convicted of killing a member of the Al-Sabah ruling family, a Kuwaiti man in his 70s and an Indonesian maid in Salwa for robbery. The men committed the crime in 2016 and were handed the final conviction in 2019. Dozens of men and women are on death row as Kuwait has slowed down the pace of executions over the past two decades under pressure from rights groups calling for a freeze on executions.

Meanwhile, the interior ministry warned on Thursday of a new style of fraud by an international gang posing as security men through video calls. The ministry said in a statement that it does not communicate with the public through video call applications. It urged the public to ignore such calls even if the callers pose as policemen.