SAUDI ARABIA: Mercy for a ‘witch’?
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Human Rights Watch has asked King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to rescind the death penalty imposed on an illiterate woman convicted of witchcraft. Fawza Falih was accused of involvement in supernatural occurrences, including the sudden impotence of a man she is said to have bewitched, according to the human rights organization.
Falih admitted to such powers under police interrogation, but retracted her confession, claiming it was made under duress. In 2006, an appeals court ruled that Falih could not be executed because she had recanted. But a lower court, which is guided by the strict interpretation of Wahhabi Islam, reinstated the death penalty to ‘protect the creed, souls and property of this country.’
Joe Stork, Middle East director for Human Rights Watch, said:
The judges’ behavior in Fawza Falih’s trial shows they were interested in anything but a quest for the truth. They completely disregarded legal guarantees that would have demonstrated how ill-founded this whole case was.
An Egyptian pharmacist working in Saudi Arabia was executed in November after being found guilty of attempting to use sorcery to break up a married couple. King Abdullah has occasionally pardoned those convicted of what many in the West see as outlandish charges, including a rape victim who was sentenced to 200 lashes last year for being in the company of men other than her husband when the crime occurred.
— Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo
Art credit: ‘A Child’s Book of Holiday Plays,’ by Frances Gillespy Wickes, 1916, from Openclipart.org