There will be some reading this article who will point out that what goes on in another country is none of our business and we should not comment upon it. There is, of course, much merit to that argument. However, when that country happens to be Saudi Arabia, a country whose meddling in the affairs of our country is of such a magnitude as to be increasingly detrimental to the very existence of our culture, then we believe we have the right, nay – duty, to point the finger of scorn on occasion! After all, isn’t it Saudi money, in the main, that is underwriting the Islamification of Britain – paying for the almost daily conversion of churches to mosques and bankrolling the erection of purpose built Islamic religious centres?
Yet here we have a country, claiming to be civilised, that has only recently condemned a simple, uneducated woman to death – on the grounds that she is a witch! Yes you have read that correctly – a witch – as in black cats and broomsticks!
Apparently the unfortunately woman was denounced as a witch for allegedly, amongst other acts of “sorcery”, making a man impotent! Having been denounced, she was subsequently arrested by the Saudi religious police, almost certainly abused and tortured, prior to being convicted and sentenced to death!
That’s how “justice” works in that particular part of the world.
Now, being unfamiliar with Saudi law, we do not know what the prescribed form of execution is for a witch – be it stoning, beheading or a traditional burning at the stake. And, just to show that we haven’t made this crazy episode up, here is a brief and slightly abridged report on this almost unbelievable story from an organisation called Human Rights Watch:
“The religious police who arrested and interrogated Fawza Falih and the judges who tried her in the northern town of Quraiyat never gave her the opportunity to prove her innocence against absurd charges that have no basis in law.
“The fact that Saudi judges still conduct trials for unprovable crimes like ‘witchcraft’ underscores their inability to carry out objective criminal investigations,” said Joe Stork, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Fawza Falih’s case is an example of how the authorities failed to comply even with existing safeguards in the Saudi justice system.”
The judges relied on Fawza Falih’s coerced confession and on the statements of witnesses who said she had “bewitched” them to convict her in April 2006. She retracted her confession in court, claiming it was extracted under duress, and that as an illiterate woman she did not understand the document she was forced to fingerprint. She also stated in her appeal that her interrogators beat her during her 35 days in detention at the hands of the religious police. At one point, she had to be hospitalized as a result of the beatings.
The judges never investigated whether her confession was voluntary or reliable or investigated her allegations of torture. They never even made an inquiry as to whether she could have been responsible for allegedly supernatural occurrences, such as the sudden impotence of a man she is said to have “bewitched.” They also broke Saudi law in multiple instances, ignoring legal rules on proper procedures in a trial.
The judges did not sit as a panel of three, as required for cases involving the death penalty. They excluded Fawza Falih from most trial sessions and banned a relative who was acting as her legal representative from attending any session. Earlier, her interrogators blocked her access to a lawyer and the judges, and denied her the right to professional legal representation, thus depriving her of the opportunity to cross-examine the witnesses against her. She claims that some of the witnesses were unknown to her and that others had made statements against her only as a result of beatings.
An appeals court ruled in September 2006 that Fawza Falih could not be sentenced to death for “witchcraft” as a crime against God because she had retracted her confession. The lower court judges then sentenced her to death on a “discretionary” basis, for the benefit of “public interest” and to “protect the creed, souls and property of this country.”
On November 2, Saudi Arabia executed Mustafa Ibrahim for sorcery in Riyadh. Ibrahim, an Egyptian working as a pharmacist in the northern town of `Ar’ar, was found guilty of having tried “through sorcery” to separate a married couple, according to a Ministry of Interior statement.
So there you have it, a supposedly civilised country that considers executing a woman for “witchcraft” to be in the “public interest” and “necessary to protect the creed, souls and property of this country” - a country that is channelling vast sums of money into reshaping this, our, country in its intolerant and medieval image!
Source - http://www.bnp.org.uk
http://www.google.com/translate?u=http% ... en&ie=UTF8
Kevin