Saudi Arabia should overturn a death sentence imposed on a Lebanese national convicted of practicing witchcraft during a visit to the conservative kingdom, an international human rights group said in a report late Tuesday.

Human Rights Watch also called on the Saudi government to halt "its increasing use of charges of 'witchcraft,' crimes that are vaguely defined and arbitrarily used."

The report highlights the ongoing complaints over the Saudi justic system, which, while based on Islamic law, leaves a wide leeway to individual judges and can often result in dramatically inconsistent sentences.

Ali Sibat, a Lebanese psychic who made predictions on a satellite TV channel from his home in Beirut, was arrested by religious police in the holy city of Medina during a pilgrimage there in May 2008 and then sentenced to death Nov. 9.

Sibat is one of scores of people reported arrested every year in the kingdom by local papers for practicing sorcery, witchcraft, black magic and fortune-telling. These practices are considered polytheism by the government of this deeply religious Muslim country.

No officials could be reached to comment on Sibat's case or offer information on how many death sentences have been issued in witchcraft-related cases. Government offices in the kingdom are closed for the Muslim al-Adha Feast.

The Human Rights Watch report presented a series of cases in the country, including that of Saudi woman Fawza Falih, who was sentenced to death by beheading in 2006 for the alleged crimes of "witchcraft, recourse to jinn (supernatural beings)," and animal sacrifice.

On November 2, 2007, Mustafa Ibrahim, an Egyptian pharmacist, was executed for sorcery in Riyadh after he was found guilty of having tried "through sorcery" to separate a married couple, said the rights group.

In another case, a criminal court in the western seaport city of Jiddah convicted Eritrean national Muhammad Burhan in October 2006, for being a "charlatan," based on a leather-bound personal phone booklet containing writing in Eritrea's Tigrinya alphabet.

He was sentenced to 20 months in prison and 300 lashes, and then was deported after serving more than double the time in prison.

"Saudi judges have harshly punished confessed 'witches' for what at worst appears to be fraud, but may well be harmless acts," Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said. "Saudi judges should not have the power to end lives of persons at all, let alone those who have not physically harmed others."