Nafeek case: Father willing to forgive

This is some good news about Rizana Nafeek. The father of the infant who accidentally died while being fed by Rizana is now willing to forgive her. Hopefully the poor mother will also come to the conclusion that the death was an accident and relent on having Rizana executed.

FROM ARABNEWS.COM:

Nafeek case: Father willing to forgive
Md Rasooldeen | Arab News

RIYADH: The Kingdom’s Human Rights Commission will attempt to persuade the mother of an infant who died in the care of a Sri Lankan woman hired as a house cleaner but given nanny duties to cease pursuit of the death penalty.
The father, according to the mediators, has expressed his desire to forgive the maid.

HRC President Turki Al-Sudairy conveyed the latest information in this much-publicized case to Sri Lankan Ambassador Abdul Ageed Mohammed Marleen at a recent meeting at the HRC headquarters in Riyadh.
Al-Sudairy said that HRC officials met the father, Naif Jiziyan Khalaf Al-Otaibi, and he expressed willingness to pardon 20-year-old Rizana Nafeek. However, the mother still claims her private right in the case and is not ready to forgive the maid.
Al-Sudairy told Marleen that the HRC will meet the father and mother together and persuade them to pardon the maid at the next hearing on Nov. 5 before a judicial tribunal headed by Chief Justice Sheikh Abdullah Al-Rosaimi.
The local court in Dawadmi found Nafeek guilty in June 2007. Since then her appeals process has bounced a number of times between the local court and the Supreme Judicial Council via the Cassation Court. Her case is still in this appeals process after the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission retained legal representation for Nafeek, with the help of contributions from the Lankan community in Saudi Arabia.

Prior to the first verdict that sentenced her to death, Nafeek did not have any legal representation.
Nafeek allegedly signed a confession, but her lawyers argue that the confession was made under duress and, more importantly, Nafeek had no access to a translator during the initial questioning after she was arrested in 2005. Confessions are typically written in Arabic and signed by fingerprint.
It later came to light that Nafeek was recruited illegally as a minor and trafficked to Saudi Arabia on a forged passport.
Her birth certificate says she was 17 at the time she began working for the Saudi family, but her passport states she was not a minor at the time.
It is illegal to bring in foreign workers to Saudi Arabia under the age of 18. An unscrupulous recruitment agent in Colombo may have committed the forgery, thus violating Sri Lankan law and engaging in the trafficking of minors and racketeering. Nobody has been named a suspect in this crime.

Putting to death a person who committed a crime under the age of 18 would violate Article 37 of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child that Saudi Arabia voluntarily signed in February 1996.

Marleen said he told Al-Sudairy that whenever there are trials involving Sri Lankan nationals, it is absolutely necessary for Sri Lankan Embassy officials to know the progress of the case in order to avoid “misrepresentations and misgivings.”
Embassy officials should be allowed as observers at the hearings, he added, pointing out that an official representative of the Sri Lankan government was not allowed to be present at Nafeek’s hearing at the Dawadmi court.
“An effective mechanism must be in place to ensure that the arrests of Sri Lankan nationals are reported to the embassy on a priority basis so that we can provide consular assistance to the detained (suspect),” Marleen told Arab News.
Meanwhile, in a letter addressed to her parents, Nafeek said that this would be her last Eid in the Kingdom since she would either be released and sent home or executed before Eid 2009.