Gang-Raped Saudi Woman Jailed Because She Went Public With Her Plight…
Friday, November 16, 2007Posted in: Saudi laws suck, Violence against women
When I read this earlier, I was so disgusted I wanted to hurt somebody. This is totally barbarian.
An appeal court in Saudi Arabia has doubled the number of lashes and added a jail sentence as punishment for a woman who was gang-raped.
The victim was initially punished for violating laws on segregation of the sexes – she was in an unrelated man’s car at the time of the attack.
When she appealed, the judges said she had been attempting to use the media to influence them.
The attackers’ sentences – originally of up to five years – were doubled.
Extra penalties
According to the Arab News newspaper, the 19-year-old woman, who is from Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority, was gang-raped 14 times in an attack in the eastern province a year-and-a-half ago.
Seven men from the majority Sunni community were found guilty of the rape and sentenced to prison terms ranging from just under a year to five years.
But the victim was also punished for violating Saudi Arabia’s laws on segregation that forbid unrelated men and women from associating with each other. She was initially sentenced to 90 lashes for being in the car of a strange man.
On appeal, the Arab News reported that the punishment was not reduced but increased to 200 lashes and a six-month prison sentence.
What the fuck? The judge needs to be hung by his balls until they bleed. In fact, he should also be butt-fucked by 14 men, and see how he fucking likes it. Thank God I live in Britain, where even with all our problems, there’s no way in the world our judges would be allowed to do such a thing.
Amidst all our bitching and moaning, sometimes we just don’t appreciate enough how lucky we are here.
Many thanks to Rosemary for the link.
Rosemary
November 16
7:52 pm
Yes, Karen. I thought your reaction would equal mine.
Talk about blaming the victim.
And the king of this repressive and misogynist government was welcomed in Buckingham Palace last week. To say nothing of Saudi Arabia being a great and favoured ally of the US.
Does make you wonder.
sallahdog
November 16
10:42 pm
remember this is the same country that had that lovely marriage counselor who on tv, reccomended that husbands first withhold sex from their uppity wives, then if that didn’t work to adjust her attitude, he should beat her. Now he said not to beat her too severely (whatever that means)…
Shelly @ Bewitched
November 16
11:15 pm
What.The.Fuck. Reading things like this makes me sick. Acts like this just serve to remind us that some of us really are just animals.
Shiloh Walker
November 16
11:35 pm
God have mercy. How sickening.
This is beyond repulsive.
Anonymous
November 17
1:09 am
What an amazing act of courage for that young women to stand up repeatedly against this insane regime. Of course, the Saudis are real close friends of the inadequate shrub.
–Jackie L.
Ann Bruce
November 17
4:22 am
You have to wonder what’s going through the judge’s mind. Does he really think he was justified in his actions? What if it had been his daughter and not just some random woman?
Shelly @ Bewitched
November 17
1:56 pm
Ann, I bet if it was his daughter he’d hand out the lashes personally. Women have no worth over there. They are objects to be owned. He probably would have beaten her bloody for being in the car originally.
Anonymous
November 17
3:13 pm
Hey Ann, congrats! Woot!
–Jackie L.
Anonymous
November 17
10:16 pm
Here is where we need to have a long memory and some voting power…any politican that considers this insult to women their ally needs to be thrown out of office.
Jenyfer Matthews
November 18
6:41 am
I’ve heard some horrible, horrible stories about life in Saudi. But it’s not only just women who get raped, then blamed. Check this out:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/10/31/africa/dubai.php
Anonymous
November 18
9:11 am
I know this isn’t a politically correct comment atall, and I don’t give a flying fig leaf. Those people are disgustingly barbaric and there’s nothing else that can be said. I’m all for religious freedom, don’t mistake me, but when your religion allows you to get away with things like setting your wife on fire, beating her, raping a woman and then SHE gets punished, well….
Then it isn’t religion, it’s a freaking cult and civilized societies would do better to completely disassociate themselves and let the whack jobs bludgeon each other into extinction.
Shirley
Karen Scott
November 18
1:20 pm
Those people are disgustingly barbaric and there’s nothing else that can be said. I’m all for religious freedom, don’t mistake me, but when your religion allows you to get away with things like setting your wife on fire, beating her, raping a woman and then SHE gets punished, well….
Couldn’t agree with you more Shirley. Organised religion has been the scourge of our world since the beginning of time, which is why I never want any part of it.
In my opinion, I consider Islam the most barbaric religion of them all.
There doesn’t seem to be much consistency within Sharia law, and its applications. Any religion that exacts such punishments, like stoning a woman to death in this day and age for committing adultery, is one to be mocked and pilloried as far as I’m concerned.
Islamic fundamentalists have taken what at its heart is supposed to be a peaceful religion, and made it the unrecognisable beast that it is today.
As a non-Muslim, I regard Islam with suspicion, mostly because of the actions of the legions of extremists that it seems to spawn. An unfair judgment perhaps, but flogging somebody just because they had the audacity to get drunk or have sex is barbaric and cruel, and has no place in the modern world, and nobody will ever be able to tell me any different.
Erin
November 25
4:41 pm
What a shame horrible things like this exist in the world. Like the poor woman hasn’t already been through enough.
azteclady
November 28
9:00 pm
It seems there’s at least a glimmer of hope that the sentence would be reviewed/revoked. [Saw a snippet of video at msnbc.com but I don’t know how to post the link without destroying the format here]
azteclady
December 3
1:59 am
From msnbc.com
(
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22058170/ )
“Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, in the U.S. for a Mideast peace conference, was visibly annoyed.”
…
“But he said the Saudi judiciary will review the case and it will go before the nation’s highest court _ a move seen as a challenge to conservative clerics who run the courts.
“Saudi writer Sultan al-Qahtani said Saud’s comment might be the “strongest message yet” from the kingdom’s leadership that the judiciary must reform. The international pressure over the case could provide momentum to legal reform efforts pushed by Saudi King Abdullah.
““The controversy over the Girl of Qatif sentence might lead to a strong push for the government, which is inclined toward reform, to confront the other elements that insist the kingdom maintain its extreme religiosity,” he wrote this week on liberal Saudi Web Site Elaph.”
On the doubling of the rape victim’s sentence, a judge said she was an adulteress because she was married at the time of the rape.
“The victim’s husband denied that, stepping forward to defend his wife by calling into a Lebanese television program last week while it aired a debate on the case.
““I’m not lacking in manhood or an Arab man’s honor that I would defend a cheating wife,” if it were true, he said on the program, which did not give his name.
““I feel that in this catastrophe she exercised bad judgment by meeting this man, but how can you or anyone say she committed adultery?” he said and described the effect of the rape on the woman, including months where she didn’t speak or eat and was physically ill.
“His public defense reflected a rare openness that has been sparked by the controversy. Usually, families in the Arab world stay firmly silent about rape because of the shame connected to it.
“So far, calls for reform within the Saudi kingdom have come from only a few voices _ but even that is a change from the past, when court decisions were rarely discussed.”