President seeks clemency for death row Lankan

Sri Lanka’s president has appealed for clemency for a maid in a Saudi Arabia prison sentenced to death by beheading.

A government statement released Tuesday says President Mahinda Rajapaksa has written to Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz seeking clemency after a court confirmed the death sentence of Sri Lankan maid Rizana Nafeek for killing an infant five years ago.

Nafeek was sentenced to death in 2007, sparking protests by international human rights groups that say Nafeek was a minor when the incident took place.

Nafeek has been lodged in a Saudi prison for the death of the four-month old infant son of her Saudi employer Naif Jiziyan Khalaf Al-Otaibi.

Earlier reports had said the baby died when she was bottle-feeding him. She was arrested for murdering the child, a charge confirmed by a Saudi court.

Nafeek, who was in her teens when she landed in Saudi Arabia to take up a maid’s job, was sentenced to death on June 16, 2007 with a provision for appeal.

Daughter of a woodcutter, Nafeek took up the job when she was just 17 to provide financial support to her poor family. To dodge Sri Lankan laws that does not allow recruitment of minor girls by manpower agencies that supply maids, her passport showed a false birth date to camouflage her underage status.

She reached Saudi Arabia on May 4, 2005, and the baby died on May 22.

With her family unable to foot the bill of litigation, the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) based in Hong Kong had taken it up by paying SR150,000 to Saudi law firm Khateb Al-Shammary in a contract to defend her.

In a letter to President Rajapakse, the AHRC director for policy and programmes Basil Fernando sought his immediate intervention to save the life of the girl who has already spent nearly five years in prison.

In the letter, Fernando noted that the sentence would have been carried without anyone’s knowledge if not for a media report about the maid’s appeal being dismissed. 

(With inputs from AP)

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