CLASSIFIED | POLITICS | TERRORISM | OPINION | VIEWS

A TEAM OF SRI LANKAN MUSLIMS WILL FLY TO SAUDI ARABIA WITH HER PARENTS TO PLEA FOR RIZANA NAFEEK ON FRIDAY

By Walter Jayawardhana

Sri Lankan Foreign Ministry sources said that the country’s Deputy Foreign Minister has been assured by the Saudi Embassy in Colombo that they will be issued visas to take a party including the parents of a minor girl condemned to death to plea for clemency and to save her from the executioners sword.

The party was getting ready to leave for Saudi Arabia July 16 Monday but had to postpone the trip to Friday since the visas had not been cleared by the Saudi Arabian Foreign Ministry.
The sources said Deputy Foreign Minister Hussain Bhaila who met the Saudi Arabian Ambassador had been assured that there was no problem in issuing the visas and they will be ready by their rescheduled trip on Friday.

The parents of Rizana Nafeek a teenager who was sentenced to be beheaded for an alleged offense she committed when she was 17, two years ago, were originally scheduled to travel on Monday with others to plea for clemency for her.

Rizana Nafeek who went to Saudi Arabia as a house maid to help her family get over from the abject poverty they were living in were given additional duty of a taking care of a baby by her employer for which she did not have any instructions or training.

The Asian Human Rights Commission says that while she was bottle feeding the four months old baby the infant chocked on milk and died accidentally due to the girl’s inexperience.
Evidence show that when the baby choked she screamed and even the mother did not know what to do.

There after the Saudi Police coerced her to sign a confession admitting she killed the baby and a panel of three judges sentenced her to be beheaded for the murder as the parents refused to pardon her, according to the girl. She also did not understand the confession written in Arabic. Later she recanted the confession when she actually came to know for what she put her signature.

Since under the Saudi Arabian law the parents of the dead infant are entitled to grant a pardon to the girl Deputy Foreign Minister Bhaila who himself is a Muslim is expecting to meet religious leaders and higher officials to persuade the dead infants parents to grant her a pardon to save her from the executioner’s sword. “In the name of Allah I will ask them to pardon my daughter. She never intended to kill,” said Mohamed Sultan Nafeek, the condemned teenager’s father who is a poor woodcutter from the war wracked impoverished Eastern Province town of Muttur.

According to Foreign Ministry sources the team scheduled to travel to Saudi Arabia consists of Deputy Minister Hussein Bhaila (leader ) and Ibrahim Sahib Ansar, director general of Middle East and North African Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Moulavi M.B.M. Zarook, representative of the Jamiyathul Ulema (Council of Islamic Theologians), Rizana's father, Mohammed Nafeek and mother Razeena.

Disclaimer: The comments contained within this website are personal reflection only and do not necessarily reflect the views of the LankaWeb. LankaWeb.com offers the contents of this website without charge, but does not necessarily endorse the views and opinions expressed within. Neither the LankaWeb nor the individual authors of any material on this Web site accept responsibility for any loss or damage, however caused (including through negligence), which you may directly or indirectly suffer arising out of your use of or reliance on information contained on or accessed through this Web site.
All views and opinions presented in this article are solely those of the surfer and do not necessarily represent those of LankaWeb.com. .

BACK TO LATEST NEWS

DISCLAIMER