Rizana Nafeek update

Rizana's family

Rizana's father's appeal to the Saudi court. (click to enlarge)

It looks like Rizana's case is being sent back to the original court that sentenced to death. What this means in the murky and secret Saudi court system is hard to fathom. Hopefully this maneuvering through the court system is a way for the Saudis to release her while saving face for the conservative faction of Saudi government. A lot of pressure has been directed at the kingdom by international organizations reverse her conviction. Lets hope she is released to return to her family in Sri Lanka in the near future.

HERE is a link to the Asian Human Rights Commission, go and learn ways to help Rizana. Time is slipping away and pressure from the international community is the only hope to save Rizana.

FROM ARAB NEWS:

Rizana Case Once Again Bounces Back to Dawdami Court
Mohammed Rasooldeen, Arab News

RIYADH, 7 June 2008

Rizana Nafeek, the young Sri Lankan housekeeper who was found guilty and sentenced to beheading on a charge of murdering an infant in her care, will go back on Monday for a fourth time to the court that sentenced her.
The high court of Al-Dawdami, about 220km west of Riyadh, will once again hear oral arguments in the case after the Supreme Judicial Council sent the case back to the provincial high court, sources at the Sri Lankan Embassy told Arab News yesterday.
The date that the Supreme Judicial Council sent the case back to Dawdami is unknown, but in April Dawdami High Court Chief Justice Sheikh Abdullah Abdulaziz Al-Rosaimi ruled that any further objections to the death verdict handed down by the Dawdami High Court would have to be taken up by the Supreme Judicial Council.

Nafeek, who is now 20, was arrested on May 22, 2005, shortly after an infant in her care died. Nafeek had been working for the family for less than two weeks when, she claims, the baby choked during bottle-feeding. The father, Naif Jiziyan Khalaf Al-Otaibi, says she murdered the child. She was taken to the Dawdami police station that day where she allegedly signed a murder confession. Later Nafeek retracted her alleged confession, saying that on the day of her arrest she signed a sheet of paper with Arabic writing on it under duress with no translators present.
In June 2007 Nafeek was sentenced to public beheading in Dawdami by a three-member panel of judges. A month later, lawyers hired by the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission with the partial financial support of Sri Lankan donors appealed the verdict to the Court of Cassation. In December, the case was sent back to Dawdami to review its death penalty verdict. By March the case moved to the Supreme Judicial Council, which the following month sent the case back to Dawdami. The Dawdami court sent the case back to the Supreme Judicial Council. Then the Supreme Judicial Council once again bounced the case back to Dawdami.
Trials are closed and court documents are not available to the public, so the reason for the back-and-forth between the courts is not clear.

Kateb Al-Shammary, Nafeek’s attorney, argues that Nafeek, who was underage at the time she came to Saudi Arabia, was never hired to be a nanny and that the death occurred due to her inexperience with newborns. The Al-Otaibi family rejects this claim and insists she committed pre-meditated murder.
Further complicating the issue is that Nafeek came to Saudi Arabia to work through a placement agency that forged the age on her passport to make it appear that she was 23.
Her birth certificate states that she was born on Feb. 4, 1988, which means she was 17 when she came to Saudi Arabia to work as a maid and then given the task by the family — who believed she was 23 — of caring for a newborn baby.
Saudi Arabia prohibits minors (defined in this case as persons under the age of 18) from entering the Kingdom to work as part of its efforts to adhere to international rules against child labor and trafficking of minors.