Rizana Nafeek:

Appeal process unsatisfactory

By Manjula Fernando

External Affairs Ministry Additional Secretary P.M. Amza who served as the Head of Mission at the Sri Lankan Embassy in Riyadh from September 2001 to February 2005 explained the unfair trial Rizana was put through before her tragic beheading.

On May 22, 2005 she was arrested and charged by the police for murder. She was sentenced to death in 2007, only then the Sri Lankan embassy came to know about the case.

As soon as the Embassy came to know of the death sentence, embassy in consultation with the Ministry arranged an appeal against the judgment. Under Sharia Law, an appeal is not normally permitted but we anyhow filed an appeal through a law firm.

A Human Rights Organisation in Hong Kong, agreed to pay 150,000 Riyals as legal expenses and immediately released 50,000 Riyals to hire lawyers.

The appeal was heard in 2010 but ultimately the death sentence was reconfirmed. The whole appeal process of Rizana was unsatisfactory. Our hope was a full retrial but instead what the High Court did was to ask the judges of the previous trial to review their judgment. As feared ultimately the same judges upheld their previous verdict.

They did not allow any cross examination of the people who gave evidence in the earlier trial, or to call for new evidence. There were a lot of flaws in the case from the beginning, Rizana was in employment for six weeks in her sponsors house. She was a juvenile, just 17 years of age and she had never worked outside her country.

She did not know the language, further she was not a professional babysitter or a nanny. She was hired as a house maid but after going there she was asked to work as a house maid and a baby sitter.

Her sponsor's (employer) house was located nearly 400 kilometres off the capital Riyadh. There were just 40-50 families living there. On the day of the incident, her employer had asked Rizana to bottle feed the baby three times on given intervals. Rizana was left alone in the house to care for the baby.

She has given the first and the second feeds without any incident and it was during the third feed that the child had choked.

Rizana put the child on the cot to ease the situation, she had not realized the baby had died until the sponsor arrived home to discover the lifeless body of the infant in the cot. The lady complained to the police that she reprimanded Rizana earlier and the baby had been killed by her in revenge.

If it was done for revenge Rizana could have killed the child during the first feeding itself. And after committing the crime she could have run away from home, she was alone in the house at the time. That would have been the usual urge if she felt guilty of committing murder.

Later before the police was informed the lady of the house and her husband had assaulted Rizana to elicit a confession. Only after she admitted to the murder that they have called the police. Then she was taken to the police and she was assaulted there as well.

She spoke only Tamil and so they have brought a labourer from Kerala working in the neighbourhood to be her interpreter. He could speak Malayalam, he had told Rizana in half Tamil that of she deny committing the crime the lady will assault and kill her, so it was better to admit and escape death.

She did not realize the seriousness of making such an admission.

When the appeal was taken up, the police informed court that Rizana's interpreter has returned to India. Another man was called to verify the integrity of the Kerala man. He said 'I know the person who acted as the interpreter, he is a good Muslim, so he will not tell a lie', and based on this claim the verdict of death sentence was reconfirmed.

Our case challenging the credentials of the interpretor was squashed on the above basis. It should have been noted that even the doctor who examined the dead child did not confirm the choking was caused by Rizana and that she was guilty of the death of the baby. According to Islam tradition, there was no postmortem performed on the body. It was her misfortune that the cause of death could not be medically established beyond doubt.

There were a lot of questions surrounding the death, which were not proven beyond doubt. And in the case of the sponsor she too was at fault, she should not have left a four month old baby in the care of a young girl who was hired recently as a housekeeper. The baby was the first born to the sponsor and later she had given birth to two other children. While the appeal process was continuing we dispatched the then Deputy Foreign Minister Hussein Bhaila and several other delegations to discuss and secure the release of Rizana.

We visited the Saudi Governorate who handled the appeal, met religious leaders, the village elders, tribal leaders and even the grandfather of the dead child, we asked a doctor residing in Riyadh to visit Rizana regularly. Until the time of her execution she was visiting Rizana at the prison voluntarily and this continued for the last 6 -7 years.

We were hopeful that Rizana will be pardoned. In fact the efforts taking place and their outcome was very positive. Rizana did not know that her death sentence had been reconfirmed and that she was to be beheaded until the day of her execution.

Earlier we were told the baby's mother refused to pardon Rizana. At the time of beheading on Wednesday, the Saudi parents were also present. There, the mother had agreed to pardon Rizana but the father had been adamant that Rizana must be killed.

Non of the Sri Lankan embassy officials were informed of her execution, hence no official were present at the time but according to the prison officers, Rizana had screamed for pardon when she was taken for beheading but still they had refused.

As of today (January 10 afternoon) we have not been officially informed of her execution. he doctor who did a voluntary job of visiting Rizana regularly in her prison phoned us from there yesterday (January 9) to break the sad news. We asked her to speak to the Prison's Chief.

Under Saudi Law there will not be any compensation to Rizana's family here. We made an official request to claim the body through the Sri Lankan mission to be handed over to her family. But she was buried by the Saudi authorities after the execution.