Slightly old news but still interesting to know that Saudi
Arabia is pretty wonky.
Saudis to execute woman for 'witchcraft'
BEIRUT, Lebanon - A leading human rights group appealed
to Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah on Thursday to stop the execution
of a woman accused of witchcraft and performing supernatural
acts.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a
statement that the kingdom's religious police who arrested and
interrogated Fawza Falih, and the judges who tried her in the
northern town of Quraiyat never gave her the opportunity to prove
her innocence in the face of "absurd charges that have no basis in
law."
Falih's case underscores shortcomings in Saudi Arabia's
Islamic legal system in which rules of evidence are shaky, lawyers
are not always present and sentences often depend on the whim of
judges.
The most frequent victims are women, who already suffer
severe restrictions on daily life in Saudi Arabia: They cannot
drive, appear before a judge without a male representative, or
travel abroad without a male guardian's permission.
What's the crime?
Witchcraft is considered an offense against Islam in the
conservative kingdom.
In Falih's case, the judges who convicted her in April
2006 relied on a coerced confession and on the statements of
witnesses who said she had "bewitched" them, according to the
group.
Falih retracted her confession in court, claiming it
was extracted under duress, and said that as an illiterate woman,
she did not understand the document she was forced to
fingerprint.
"The fact that Saudi judges still conduct trials for
unprovable crimes like 'witchcraft' underscores their inability to
carry out objective criminal investigations," said Joe Stork,
Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.
There was no immediate comment on the statement from
Saudi Arabia, where government offices are closed on Thursdays, the
start of the Muslim weekend.
"Fawza Falih's case is an example of how the
authorities failed to comply even with existing safeguards in the
Saudi justice system," he added.
The Saudi court cited an instance in which a man
allegedly became impotent after being bewitched by Falih, the
rights group said.
An appeals court ruled in September 2006 that Falih
could not be sentenced to death for witchcraft because she had
retracted her confession. But a lower court subsequently reissued
the death sentence for the benefit of "public interest" and to
"protect the creed, souls and property of this country," the
group's statement said.
Forced divorce
Human Rights
Watch's statement came a day after Yakin Erturk, the U.N. special
investigator for violence against women, wrapped up a 10-day visit
to Saudi Arabia during which she highlighted another controversial
case that has attracted international criticism.
Ertuk met with Fatima and Mansour al-Timani, who were
forcibly divorced by the wife's family on grounds she had married
someone from a lesser tribe.
The couple learned of the divorce on Feb. 25, 2006,
when police knocked on their door to serve Mansour the divorce
papers.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Erturk said she met
the wife and husband who were in a "terrible state of mind" and
that Saudi officials had promised her arrangements would be made
for the couple's reunion, according to Saudi newspaper Arab
News.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23162712/