Saudi Justice

I haven't blogged here for some time but I have to comment on this dreadful story. I should warn you in advance that you may find some of these events extremely distressing.

It starts back in March of last year, over in the Eastern Province, in or near the town of Qatif.

A 19 year-old woman was kidnapped by a gang of seven men. She was taken to a nearby farm where she was raped a total of 14 times. A man who tried to come to her aid was beaten up and also raped!

According to a report in the Arab News:-

Gang members were reported to have taken pictures of the rapes and contacted both victims telling them that if they did not help them find other young women to rape they would distribute their pictures.

Despite this, the couple reported these crimes to the police and five of the gang were arrested.

A security source from the Eastern Province said that all the four arrested men had confessed to the crime.

In a case such as this, according to Shari'a, you either need four witnesses (!) or a confession. Saudi justice is based on confessions; usually a suspect has something like a baseball bat applied to sensitive parts of his anatomy until he confesses. These four were sentenced:-

Four of the seven men who gang-raped a young woman in March have been sent to jail for periods ranging between one and five years by a court in Qatif and will be given 80 to 1,000 lashes.

According to police sources, only four members of the gang have been sentenced. Another man, who is presently in police custody, is awaiting sentencing while two members of the gang are presently on the run.

Considering that they could have been given the death penalty, this is extremely lenient. However, worse was yet to come for the victims:-

The court also sentenced the woman and the man she was meeting to 90 lashes for having met in private. The security source from the Eastern Province said, “The judge sentenced the girl and the man to 90 lashes because they were alone with the intention of doing something bad. Because of that, they will be punished.” Relatives of the woman said that they would appeal against the 90-lash-sentence.

During the trial, the woman claimed that she did not know the man and that he had come to her rescue after she was kidnapped. The fifth gang member, who is awaiting sentencing, handed himself to police weeks ago. He will be sentenced on a later date.

The appeal finally reached court a few days ago:-

The Appeals Court sentenced the victim to 200 lashes and six months in prison. The seven rapists had their sentences increased to between two and nine years. The verdict came in as a shock to everybody.

You can say that again.

A source at the Qatif General Court said that the judges had informed the rape victim that the reason behind doubling her punishment was “her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media.”

Judge Soliman Al-Muhanna from the Qatif court told the lawyer (Al-Lahem) that the judicial committee had decided to suspend him from the case. They also confiscated his license which is granted to Saudi lawyers by the Ministry of Justice.

So not only do they punish the victim, they also punish her lawyer for pointing out the injustice of the case. I found a more detailed report on the new sentences here. This article has a slightly different version of events:-

The young woman’s offense was in meeting a former boyfriend, whom she had asked to return pictures he had of her because she was about to marry another man. The couple was sitting in a car when a group of seven men kidnapped them and raped them both, lawyers in the case told Arab News, a Saudi newspaper.

The article continues:-

“I don’t agree with this judgment,” Bassem Alim, a lawyer in Jidda, said of the woman’s sentence. “I think it’s overly severe. She should not be punished for going to the media and explaining her case.”

Mr. Alim, a friend of the victim’s lawyer, said the standard punishment for adultery is 60 to 80 lashes, so the sentence was unusually harsh, even for Saudi Arabia.

“I don’t think she was committing adultery in that car,” Mr. Alim added.

It can't be adultery as she wasn't married; had she actually had intercourse in the car, the crime would be called zina which is normally translated into English as fornication.

That someone should be punished on a mere suspicion of having intercourse with a person who is not their spouse is barbaric. That a woman should be punished after suffering such a dreadful ordeal is so inhumane as to beggar belief.