Rizana case sent back to High Court

Mohammed Rasooldeen in Riyadh

The Supreme Judicial Council (SJC), the Kingdom’s highest Court of Appeal, has sent the case of Rizana Nafeek, the Sri Lankan maid convicted of killing a four-month-old baby in her care, back to the High Court in Dawadmi for clarifications.

The case was sent to the SJC after a Court of Cassation upheld a guilty decision reached by a three-member Bench headed by Chief Judge Abdullah Abdulaziz Al-Rosaimi — at Dawadmi High Court.

“I am happy that the case has been sent to the High Court where the original death sentence was given,” said Khateb Fahad Al-Shammary, Nafeek’s lawyer.

He added that the hearing is to take place today. In his appeal to the SJC, Al-Shammary cited several reasons why the maid should not be punished, including that Nafeek was underage at the time of the offense and that she was brought into the Kingdom to work as a housemaid and not as a nanny.

The petition, further, claimed that Nafeek had no need to harbour vengeance against the parents, since she had only been working for the family for seven days.

Al-Shammary said he briefed Sri Lankan Ambassador Abdul Ajeed Mohammed Marleen on the recent development of the case on Saturday. The Sri Lankan Embassy in Riyadh is expected to send a team of officials, including an interpreter, to help the Lankan maid in court.

The hearing is expected to be attended by Naif Jiziyan Khalaf Al-Otaibi, the father of the four-month-old baby, Al-Shammary and Nafeek.

The Sri Lankan Government last month sent a two-member team under the leadership of Deputy Foreign Minister Hussein Bhaila to approach the child’s parents for clemency. The team met tribal leaders and members of the Saudi Human Rights Commission during its brief stay in the Kingdom.

Marleen, who took over duties as Ambassador recently, said his Government respects the Saudi judiciary and would follow the Kingdom’s legal procedures.

Nafeek arrived in Riyadh in May 2005 to work as a housemaid for her sponsor Naif Jiziyan Khalaf Al-Otaibi.

A few days after her arrival in Riyadh, Nafeek was brought to Dawadmi, about 390 km west of Riyadh, to work at Al-Otaibi’s home. Apart from performing the daily household chores of cleaning, cooking, washing and ironing clothes, Rizana had also been entrusted with looking after the sponsor’s four-month-old infant son, which she was not trained to do.

The baby died around 12.30 p.m. on May 22, 2005, while Nafeek was bottle-feeding him. She was then arrested by police and allegedly confessed to killing the child. Nafeek repeated her confession in open court. However, at a court hearing on February 3, 2007, she retracted her confession, saying she had confessed under duress.

Nafeek was convicted of murdering the infant on June 16. An appeal was filed against the judgment on July 15, a day before the deadline set out by the court. The Court of Cassation affirmed the judgment and sent the case to the SJC.

In her statement to the court, Rizana claimed that at the time of her arrival in Saudi Arabia, she was 17 and that a recruitment agent had falsified her documents and obtained a passport by over-stating her true age by six years.

According to her passport, her date of birth is stated as February 2, 1982, while the certified copy of her birth certificate indicates her actual date of birth as February 4, 1988.