Lanka official seeks clemency for Rizana

RIYADH
Sri Lankan Deputy Foreign Minister Hussein Bhaila has arrived in Saudi Arabia to lobby on behalf of a maid sentenced to beheading for the death of an infant in her care, Arab News reports.
Bhaila called on the family to pardon Nafeek Rizana and said “she hails from impoverished circumstances. Her father is a woodcutter who lives hand-to-mouth and has to support his wife and two other children with his meagre income. She came here in search of a job and got caught up in the case.”
Rizana, 20, was sentenced to beheading for the death of a four-month-old boy on May 22, 2005, in Dawadami, about 390 kms west of Riyadh. Last week the case was moved to the Cassation Court in Riyadh. The boy’s father, Naif Jiziyan Khalaf Al Otaibi, 32, who works for the Finance Ministry, and his wife accused Nafeek of murdering their child.
Rizana claims that the baby accidentally choked to death during a bottle-feeding session, and she confessed under duress without the help of translators. Her side of the story came to light after the Sri Lankan embassy provided translators and interviewed her in prison.
On June 16, 2007, a three-member panel of judges in the Dawadami High Court sentenced Rizana to beheading. Her legal representative, supported through funds from the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission and donations from Sri Lankans, appealed the verdict. Rizana says she was 17 when she arrived in the kingdom on May 4, 2005, on a passport that was falsified by her recruiter to alter her year of birth to 1982. Her birth certificate states she was born in 1988.