Saudi girl gang raped, looks for justice, and gets lashing punishiment instead

Rape case has Saudi law under scrutiny
Lashes for alleged victim raise outcry

By Donna Abu-Nasr
AL-AWAMIYAH, Saudi Arabia -- 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 news 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, is sentences left to the whim of judges. 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 she allegedly was attacked and raped by a group of other men.

In this sleepy Shiite village on the outskirts of the eastern city of Qatif, the 19-year-old is struggling to forget the spring night that changed her life. In an Associated Press interview, the young woman spoke on condition of anonymity to protect her privacy; the AP does not identify rape victims unless they ask to be named.

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 1 and 5 years in prison plus 80 to 1,000 lashes, the woman said. 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 usually are 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 Shariah law. Judges, who are appointed by the king on the recommendation of the Supreme Judicial Council, have complete discretion to set sentences, except in cases where Shariah outlines a punishment, such as capital crimes.

That means no two judges would likely hand down the same verdict for similar crimes. In one recent case, three men convicted of raping a 12-year-old boy received sentences of 1 to 2 years in prison and 300 lashes each.

In contrast, another judge sentenced at least four men to 6 to 12 years' imprisonment for fondling women in a tunnel.

Judges in the Girl of Qatif case referred the AP to the Justice Ministry when asked about the sentencing. The ministry, in a statement this week, 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.

Shariah 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.

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