The Girl of Qatif - Her Punishment for Rape

[Curiosity]

I can't wrap my head around this culture
http://news.aol.com/world/story/_a/...ore-lashes-than/n20061121165109990005?cid=774

Updated:2006-11-22 06:44:22
Saudi Girl Sentenced to More Lashes Than Her Rapists
By DONNA ABU-NASR
AP
AL-AWWAMIYA, Saudi Arabia (Nov. 21) - When the teenager went to the police a few months ago to report she was gang-raped by seven men, she never imagined the judge would punish her - and that she would be sentenced to more lashes than one of her alleged rapists received.

The story of the Girl of Qatif, as the alleged rape victim has been called by the media here, has triggered a rare debate about Saudi Arabia's legal system, in which judges have wide discretion in punishing a criminal, rules of evidence are shaky and sometimes no defense lawyers are present.

The result, critics say, are sentences left to the whim of judges. These include one in which a group of men got heavier sentences for harassing women than the men in the Girl of Qatif rape case or three men who were convicted of raping a boy. In another, a woman was ordered to divorce her husband against her will based on a demand by her relatives.

In the case of the Girl of Qatif, she was sentenced to 90 lashes for being alone in a car with a man to whom she was not married - a crime in this strictly segregated country - at the time that she was allegedly attacked and raped by a group of other men.

In the sleepy, Shiite village of al-Awwamiya on the outskirts of the eastern city of Qatif, the 19-year-old is struggling to forget the spring night that changed her life. An Associated Press reporter met her in a face-to-face interview. She spoke on condition of anonymity to protect her privacy; the AP does not identify rape victims unless they ask to be named.

Her hands tremble, her dark brown eyes are lifeless. Her sleep is interrupted by a replay of the events, which she describes in a barely audible whisper.

That night, she said, she had left home to retrieve her picture from a male high school student she used to know. She had just been married - but had not moved in with her husband - and did not want her picture to remain with the student.

While the woman was in the car with the student, she said, two men intercepted them, got into the vehicle and drove the couple to a secluded area where the two were separated. She said she was raped by seven men, three of whom also allegedly raped her friend.

In a trial that ended in November - in which the prosecutor asked for the death penalty for the seven men - four of the men received between one and five years in prison plus 80 to 1,000 lashes, said the woman. Three others are awaiting sentencing. Neither the defendants nor the plaintiffs retained lawyers, as is common here.

"The big shock came when the judge sentenced me and the man to 90 lashes each," said the woman. The sentence was handed down as part of the rape trial. Lashes are usually spread over several days, dealt around 50 at a time.

The sentences have yet to be carried out, but the punishments ordered have caused an uproar.

"Because I could make no sense (of the sentence) and became in dire need of patience, I muttered after I read the verdict against the Girl of Qatif: 'My heart is with you,"' wrote Fatima al-Faqeeh in a column in Al-Watan newspaper.

Justice in Saudi Arabia is administered by a system of religious courts according to the kingdom's strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law. Judges - appointed by the king on the recommendation of the Supreme Judicial Council - have complete discretion to set sentences, except in cases where Sharia outlines a punishment, such as capital crimes.

That means no two judges would likely hand down the same verdict for similar crimes. A rapist, for instance, could receive anywhere from a light or no sentence to death, depending on the judge.

Saudis are urging the Justice Ministry to clarify the logic behind some rulings. In one recent case, three men convicted of raping a 12-year-old boy received sentences of between one and two years in prison and 300 lashes each. In contrast, another judge sentenced at least four men to between six and 12 years imprisonment for fondling women in a tunnel in Riyadh.

Saleh al-Shehy, a columnist for Al-Watan, asked Justice Minister Abdullah Al-Sheik to explain why the boy's rapists got a lighter sentence than the men in last year's sexual harassment case.

"I won't ask you my brother, the minister, if you find the ruling satisfactory or not," wrote al-Shehy. "I will ask you, 'Do you think it satisfies God?"

"Please explain to us how one judge ruled and how the other ruled? What evidence did the one rely on and what proof did the other use?" he added.

The broad discretion judges enjoy have been a disaster for Fatima, another Saudi woman. She suddenly found herself divorced from her husband, Mansour al-Timani, after her half-brothers went to a judge and told him their sister had married beneath her.

Fatima, whose full name has not been given in media reports, had been married for over three years and was pregnant with her second child when the judge declared the marriage void in July 2005.

Today, Fatima sits in jail with her 11-month-old son - her 4-year-old daughter was recently freed - rather than return to the custody of her family as the judge decreed.

The problems over sentencing are exacerbated by loose trial rules, in which physical evidence sometimes is not presented.

The Girl of Qatif said her trial had two sessions. The three trial judges asked for her statement, then heard the statement from the seven defendants in the first court session, according to the woman. In the second, about a month later, the judges pronounced their verdict. It was not known if there were other sessions she did not attend.

Judges in the case referred The Associated Press to the Justice Ministry when asked about the sentencing. The ministry, in a statement Tuesday, said rape could not be proved. There were no witnesses and the men had recanted confessions they made during interrogation, the statement said. It said the verdict cannot be appealed.

Sharia allows defendants to deny signed confessions, according to Abdul-Aziz al-Gassem, a lawyer who was not involved in the case. They still get punished if convicted, but the verdict is lighter.

"The lack of transparency in the investigation, the trial and the sentencing, plus the difficulties that journalists have to get access lead to deep a darkness where everything is possible," said al-Gassem.

 

[Tresson]

What do you expect when religion and the state are so intertwined. You saw similar things happen when the church held the same amount of power.

 

[MikeyDB]

Should make every North American proud when they gas up the family chariot to know that we've funnelled money to these barbarians for decades. Terrorist support??? Canada and the United States have been supporting terrorism in Saudi Arabia and other nations around the world for years.

 

[Sassylassie]

I can't argue with your view point Mikey because it's true. Perhaps it's time the West reviewed it's business practices with this evil empire. I believe this country was the birth place of terrorism? :|

 

[tracy]

Saudi Arabia has to be one of the worst countries in the world for women. It's disgusting.

 

[MikeyDB]

Tracy

Greetings!

As tragic as the history of Saudi Arabia's treatment of women may be, we all participate in disenfranchising women there (in Saudi Arabia) as well as every other nation where the consumption-at-any-cost attitude fostered in the consummerist west maintains sweatshops and poverty.

A vote being sought by some nabob in Washington or Ottawa is seldom undergirded by the promise that our practices of empowering terrorist regimes and maintaining slave conditions among the people's who produce our "consumer goods" from Bangaladesh to China to Indonesia to South America will be staunchly maintained and protected by this or that 'government-if-elected' but of course that's exactly what our governments have been doing for decades.

 

[Colpy]

Tracy

Greetings!

As tragic as the history of Saudi Arabia's treatment of women may be, we all participate in disenfranchising women there (in Saudi Arabia) as well as every other nation where the consumption-at-any-cost attitude fostered in the consummerist west maintains sweatshops and poverty.

A vote being sought by some nabob in Washington or Ottawa is seldom undergirded by the promise that our practices of empowering terrorist regimes and maintaining slave conditions among the people's who produce our "consumer goods" from Bangaladesh to China to Indonesia to South America will be staunchly maintained and protected by this or that 'government-if-elected' but of course that's exactly what our governments have been doing for decades.

Now then, I've a slightly different view.......

We have paid a fair price for oil, and paid it to a cartel, for cryin' out loud. The internal matters of Saudi Arabia are not our responsibility, are they?

I suppose we could have invaded and taken the oil..............

Inconsistency is a problem of the left as well as the hawks. Oil is the lifeblood of western civilization.

We could pay for it, making that society extremely rich, and allow them to develop as they would, or

we could take it by military means, and rule that society.

Neither one, nor any middle ground, suits the nay sayers, all they can do is say nay.

 

[MikeyDB]

Or some folk might have received something more than incredulous disdain from the petro-media propaganda machine back in the fifties and sixties when lots of folk were telling the world that our dependence on oil would eventually bite us in the nevermore never more...

From the environment to sweatshops, the "status quo" has been the cornerstone of western governments policies when it comes to protecting the consumption machine that now runs our governments. Rights abuses have occurred for ever and the record of rights abuses by OPEC nations isn't somehing that just sprang into existence...

Is the "fair" price we paid for oil "fair" to people in Saudi Arabia or Iraq or any of several other nations whose monarchies and dictatorships have flourished on western nations appetites?

"Fair" is a relative term wouldn't you agree Colpy?

 

[#juan]

Now then, I've a slightly different view.......

We have paid a fair price for oil, and paid it to a cartel, for cryin' out loud. The internal matters of Saudi Arabia are not our responsibility, are they?

They are if we helped to install the Saudi royal family, or we helped intall the Shah of Iran, or Saddam Hussein. In the case of Iran, we overthrew a democratically elected government to get the Shah in power.

 

[MikeyDB]

Only if some neocon with an apocalyptic view that if anyone but the United States begins stockpiling WMD (or there's even a rumor to that effect)...then by golly all bets are off... Invade them evil-doers and pillage their nation in the name of bringing peace and democracy to people who've been oppressed for years by ....gee governments that have contributed to their oppressors wars and policies for decades in the name of cheap gasoline...

Kind of like finding somone convenient to blame for substance abuse...certainly not the user or the people with the appetite...certainly not governments who've collected billions in taxes while selling cigarettes then turns around and passes laws to "protect" consumers...

No we musn't look too deeply into why we have the problems we do in the world, we run the risk of staring into our own faces in a mirror....

 

[tracy]

Tracy

Greetings!

As tragic as the history of Saudi Arabia's treatment of women may be, we all participate in disenfranchising women there (in Saudi Arabia) as well as every other nation where the consumption-at-any-cost attitude fostered in the consummerist west maintains sweatshops and poverty.

.

I agree with you on this. We care more about driving gas guzzlers cheaply than we do about repressive governments in places like Saudi Arabia.

A friend of mine actually wanted us to go work there. Nurses make a good amount of money and it's tax free, but I can't imagine it would be worth it.

 

[tracy]

Now then, I've a slightly different view.......

We have paid a fair price for oil, and paid it to a cartel, for cryin' out loud. The internal matters of Saudi Arabia are not our responsibility, are they?

I suppose we could have invaded and taken the oil..............

Inconsistency is a problem of the left as well as the hawks. Oil is the lifeblood of western civilization.

We could pay for it, making that society extremely rich, and allow them to develop as they would, or

we could take it by military means, and rule that society.

Neither one, nor any middle ground, suits the nay sayers, all they can do is say nay.

Or we could actually encourage developments that would make Saudi Arabian oil unecessary.

I understand your point, but I disagree. We know they'll use our money to pay for courts that sentence rape victims to be beaten and jailed. I'm not entirely comfortable with that.

 

[iARTthere4iam]

Why are we being blamed for this? We can ignore Saudi Arabia and it's abuses of women, we can criticize the abuses of women, or we can try to stop them. Which of these would you prefer? We do not make Saudi Arabia abuse women. Canada is not guiltless in the world, neither are we responsible for the tradgedies commited by other nations.

 

[de Mirage]

hi

it's totally ridiculous story,

I can't wrap my head around this culture

Its mostly realted to the culture. in some cultures, women are held accountable for crimes that they should not be. It was no suprise to me that she recieved lashings as well. She got off easy, she wasn't killed for this "crime" as she may have been in some other country typically by either her brother or her father. I know this and accept it begrudgingly. For an example of some sort in the US, look back in history when the "rule of thumb" against women was acceptable.

When people of other cultures come to the US, they don't understand why violence against women is not tolerated.

religion could be interpreted differently based on the culture.

regards,

 

[I think not]

Sorry MikeyDB and #juan but I threw away my "I'm guilty because I'm a white male with an SUV living in North America" t-shirt a long time ago.

What exactly do both of you THINK was going on in Muslim culture BEFORE the addictive to oil industrial revolution? You think they were handing out candy to women? Cry me a river.

They live in the dark ages. Period.