Women Gets Raped and Is Sentenced to 6 Months in Jail and 200 Lashes

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This week in the Economist there was a story about a women who was raped in Saudi Arabia, and then through the process of their legal system was also punished for the events that happened. This is not to say that the men who kidnapped her and raped her were not also punished, but what is shocking is that this women, who was brutally raped, was also punished for going to talk to an old friend who was not her husband.

Last year a 19-year-old woman in the eastern town of Qatif appealed against a sentence of 90 lashes for the crime of khulwa (seclusion) with a man who was not related to her. Her lawyer argued that meeting a former friend in a shopping-centre car park, to retrieve a photo of herself that she feared would upset her fiancé, was scarcely so grave an offence. Moreover, this “crime” was far outweighed by the fact that the two friends had been interrupted by seven youths, who abducted them at knife-point and allegedly gang-raped both of them, repeatedly.

What makes this story even more grotesque was the fact that as this 19 year old women tried to go through the Saudi legal system and have her sentence reduced, yet as she began the legal process she found that her sentence, like those who raped her, was doubled and she ended up getting 200 lashes.

To add further insult, it barred the woman’s lawyer from the court, suspended his licence and referred him to a disciplinary board.

In a country that values the just nature of its legal system, this sounds pretty unjust and unfair. It is only fair to note that their legal system is based on Islamic principals and therefore these laws may seem somewhat cruel to us, they are based in Islamic ideology. Yet this ruling is one of many rulings that have caused controversy in recent years.

Other controversial rulings include one where a judge forcibly divorced a couple because the wife’s half-brothers complained she had married beneath her station, another whereby an Egyptian accused of apostasy was beheaded for allegedly putting a Koran in a toilet. In yet another case an Egyptian doctor got 80 lashes for “defamation” after protesting and proving that his son had been sexually molested by his headmaster.

The main problem within Saudi Arabia is that even with, at the governmental level, reforms allowing the people to protest unjust rulings by judges; there is very little governmental control over the judges. These judges therefore feel that they can take the law into their hands and do as they please which is the crux of the problem in the Saudi legal system.

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