ELAASAR: Saudi justice blames victim in punishing, For Immediate Release 11-24-07

Blame it on the Victim: Saudi rape victim gets 200 lashes and prison

By Aladdin Elaasar – It happens only in Saudi Arabia. Believe it or not, a Saudi 19-year-old girl was in a car with a male acquaintance when the car was attacked by a gang of seven Saudi men who raped her and her male partner multiple times. After reporting that to authorities, the girl was sentenced to 100 lashes and six months in jail because she was in an unrelated man’s car! After bringing the case to the attention of the media, Saudi authorities retaliated by increasing the sentence to 200 lashes.

The case has caused an international outcry. Democratic hopefuls in the US presidential race have condemned the decision by the Saudi court. Hillary Clinton said that King Abdullah should cancel the ruling. Barack Obama said the sentence was “beyond unjust”. Similar criticism came from Joe Biden and John Edwards. Edwards said in a statement: “I am outraged that President Bush has refused to condemn the sentence”. The State Department has expressed “astonishment” at the sentence.

Saudi Arabia maintains a judicial system loosely based on the Islamic Sharia law. Public lashing, execution, hand chopping and flogging are a common scene in the Kingdom. The Sharia courts are often head by blind, illiterate and handpicked judges belonging to different tribes. There are no defense attorneys, nor due process. The Saudi Monarchy attains its legitimacy from being an enforcer of the austere, puritanical, Wahabi brand of Islam. Billions of Saudi petrodollars have helped spread the intolerant and radical Wahabism: from the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Muslim Brothers and Hamas, to many other parts of the world including the West.

The case of the Saudi rape victim drew some similarities to another horrendous case that took place few years ago. Another young girl in Pakistan was condemned to be gang raped by male members of the tribe that alleged that the girl’s brother defiled her honor. It happened in a similar fundamentalist so-called conservative and tribal community with the power in the hands of tribal elders, with no regard to the law, basic human rights or even Sharia.

Many Westerners would be appalled to know that Saudi women are barred from diving or traveling without a family male companion. Oddly enough, they are allowed to be driven by foreign male drivers imported by the thousands from many countries and live in the same house. The Saudi government still enforces strict separation between the sexes at schools at work, and at public places, in general. Religious police, mutawa, with their own jails, are literally chasing people off the streets of the Kingdom with wooden sticks and throwing them in jails for offenses like talking to a female passerby with summary sentences afterwards. Immoral conduct is ground for instant firing from one’s job and deportation of foreign nationals who lose all their belongings and assets.

But there is a different kind of justice in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Saudi people talk about the lavish and extravagant life style of the rich and affluent in their society and definitely members of their royal family. They tell stories about the self-indulgent and hedonistic life style of some Saudi princes and princesses, who are literally above the law. Western workers in Saudi Arabia enjoy similar protection while third world foreign workers do not. For them, the sword of Saudi justice is swift.

Few years ago, a gang competing on the trafficking of liquor in the kingdom placed a pipe bomb in the car of another gang leader. Some people got killed, others injured. The defendants who happened to be British citizens were pardoned by the late King Fahad under political pressure.

One look at the best selling novel “Girls of Riyadh” by Saudi female novelist Rajaa Alsanea reveals the hidden aspects of a self-righteous Saudi society shrouded with secrecy. It reveals the sexual oppression that leads to an obsessive and schitsophrenic behavior. It also showed how Saudi women are treated in a male-dominated, patriarchic and tribal society. They can be easily married off in arranged family deals, ostracized and not even vindicated through the current legal system.

Farida Deif, a researcher at Human Rights Watch said that “This verdict not only sends victims of sexual violence the message that they should not press charges, but in effect offers protection and impunity to the perpetrators. Victims of sexual violence in Saudi Arabia face enormous obstacles in the criminal justice system. Their interrogations and court hearings are more likely to compound the trauma of the original assault than provide justice” Said Deif.

During the recent hearings, the judge also banned lawyer, Abdel Rahman al-Lahim, Saudi Arabia’s best-known human rights lawyer from the courtroom and from any future representations. He also confiscated his identification card, which the Ministry of Justice issued. Al-Lahim faces a disciplinary hearing at the Ministry of Justice on December 5, where sanctions can include suspension for three years and disbarment.

“The decision to ban the rape victim’s lawyer from the case shows what little respect Saudi authorities have for the legal profession or the law in general,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

(Aladdin Elaasar is an award-winning journalist who covered the first Gulf War in saudi Arabia and author of “Silent Victims: The plight of Arabs and Muslims in Post 9/11 America.” Copyright Arab Writers Group Syndicate, www.ArabWritersGroup.com)