Princess Misha'al bint Fahd was a member of House of Saud, who was executed by gunshot for alleged adultery in 1977, at the age of 19. She was a granddaughter of Prince Muhammad bin Abdulaziz, who was an older brother of King Khalid.
Her family sent Misha'al bint Fahd, at her own request, to Lebanon to attend school. While residing in there, she fell in affection with a man, Khaled al-Sha'er Mulhallal, the nephew of Ali Hassan al-Shaer, the Saudi ambassador in Lebanon, and they began an affair. Upon their return to Saudi Arabia, it emerged that they had conspired to meet alone on several occasions and a charge of adultery was brought against them.
She made few attempts to evade and escape from Saudi Arabia. She made an attempt to fake her own drowning and was caught trying to escape from Saudi Arabia with Khaled. She also disguised as a man and tried to escape but she was recognized by a passport examiner at Jeddah airport. She was subsequently returned to her family.
Under Sharia law, a person can only be convicted of adultery by the testimony of four adult male witnesses to the act of sexual penetration, or by their own admission of guilt, stating three times in court "I have committed adultery." There were no witnesses. Her family urged her not to confess, but instead to merely promise never to see her lover again. On her return to the courtroom, she allegedly repeated her confession: "I have committed adultery. I have committed adultery. I have committed adultery." This account has been challenged by the docudrama Death of a Princess, which claims the princess and her lover were never actually tried in court.
On 15 July 1977 at the only age of 19, she was executed along with her boy friend. Both were publicly executed in Jeddah by the side of the Queen's Building in the carpark. Princess was shot several times in the head in 1977 in a carpark. Her death is thought to have been ordered by her grandfather, Muhammad bin Abdul Aziz al Saud, the King's older brother. Despite her royal status, she was blindfolded, made to kneel, and executed with the gun shot on the explicit instructions of her grandfather, a senior member of the royal family, for the alleged dishonour she brought on her clan and defying a royal order calling for her to marry a man selected by the family.
Khaled, after being forced to watch her execution, was beheaded with a sword by, it is believed, one of the princess's male relatives. The executioner was not practiced or dressed as a normal executioner. Prince Muhammad’s bodyguards likely carried out ‘the execution’. Khallid received a blow on the left and on the right of the head with a short sword. It took five blows to sever his head, which was not the work of a professional executioner. Both executions were conducted near the palace in Jeddah, not in the public execution square in Jeddah.