The man, whose name and nationality have not been disclosed, was caught red-handed while handing notes concerning sorcery to a woman whose husband had left her. Investigators said they had arrested the man for practicing "sorcery and scams".
Sorcery is banned in Saudi Arabia, whose strict interpretation of Islamic laws calls for executing soothsayers, sorcerers and witches. Clerics dominate the country's legal system, and often act as judges.
This February, the New York-based Human Rights Watch reported that Saudi authorities had sentenced an illiterate Saudi villager to death for performing witchcraft on "absurd charges that had no basis in law." The sentence has not yet been carried out.
In 2007, an Egyptian national was beheaded after a Saudi accused him of practicing magic in order to separate him from his wife. Police allegedly found books on black magic and "foul-smelling herbs" in his house.
In Europe in the Middle Ages, tens of thousand of people, note to mention untold numbers of black cats, were killed during witch hunts. The last person to be imprisoned on witchcraft charges in Britain was a certain Helen Duncan, who in 1944 was jailed for "defrauding the public," although media reports said that wartime authorities were wary of her powers of clairvoyance.
