The Travesty Continues In Saudi Arabia

This is an update to the case of the young Saudi woman brutally gang-raped who was originally sentenced to 90 lashes by the Saudi Courts but who, on appeal, was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months imprisonment. The Saudi Court also removed her attorney from the case and has begun proceedings to suspend his license.

The woman was originally sentenced to 90 lashes for being outside of her house in the company of a man to whom she was not related. Under Sharia law, that situation creates an irrebuttable presumption that the woman is a prostitute or, if married, has committed adultery. Her attackers were given light sentences of just a few years. On appeal of her punishment and the light punishments given to her attackers, the Court changed her sentence to 200 lashes and six months imprisonment. The Court drastically increased her sentence because of their anger with the international attention her attorney had initiated by publicizing the utter barbarity of sentencing a victim of gang rape to 60 lashes.

Fox News is reporting that the Saudi Justice Ministry has refused to reconsider the sentence and is now contending that the young woman has affirmatively "confessed to cheating on her husband." That marks a major change to the narrative. According to the woman and her attorney, the then recently married woman:

. . . met a high school friend in his car to retrieve a picture of herself from him. While in a car with him, two men got into the vehicle and drove them to a secluded area where others waited, and then she and her companion were both raped.

But the Justice Ministry’s account now being given for the first time and for international consumption, disagrees in all particulars. According to the Justice Ministry,

[the woman planned] to meet her lover for tryst in his car "in a dark place where they stayed for a while. Then they where spotted by the other defendants as the woman was in an indecent condition as she had tossed away her clothes, then the assault occurred on her and the man.

Moreover, the Ministry now claims that the woman and her husband are "convinced on the verdict and agreed to it." Somehow I suspect we will never be hearing the woman's "confession" nor her "agreement" to this sentence from her lips. Regardless, . . .

[t]he Saudi justice minister expressed his regret about the media reports over the role of the women in this case which put out false information and wrongly defend her.

And we are not going to be getting any independant verification of that. Read the story here. The one thing Salafi and Wahhabi Islamists hate above all other is to have a bright light shown on their religion and their actions taken in accordance therewith. It's not in just this incredibly heavy handed and brutal case. Rather, it is a reoccurring theme that you can see repeated all the way up to the UN. The Justice Ministry’s attempt to whitewash this case and deflect attention with highly dubious assertions would be laughable were it not so incredibly barbaric.

If you would like to let the Saudi Arabia and their related organizations in America know what you think of this verdict, you can e-mail the Saudi embassy at info@saudiembassy.net. And you can send an e-mail to CAIR asking them their position on this given that they claim to be the primary Islamic human rights organization in America. They can be reached by contact form here.

Update: CNN's article on this is the most complete I have seen. Find it here.