Saudi authorities executed a citizen on Tuesday after convicting him of sexually harassing and brutally murdering his Indonesian maid.

Shayea al-Qahtani was found guilty of killing the maid by beating her with a cane and pouring boiling water over her, the interior ministry said.

His execution in the southwestern province of Abha was the 63rd in the kingdom so far this year.

That compares with 87 in the whole of 2014 in what Amnesty International has called a "macabre spike" in the kingdom's use of the death penalty.

The London-based human rights group ranked Saudi Arabia among the top three executioners in the world last year.

The interior ministry has said that the death penalty provides an important deterrent.

Drug trafficking, rape, murder, apostasy and armed robbery are all punishable by death under the kingdom's strict version of Islamic sharia law.