"My client is the victim of this abhorrent crime. I believe her sentence contravenes the Islamic Sharia law and violates the pertinent international convention…The judicial bodies should have dealt with this girl as the victim rather than the culprit."
—Lawyer Abdel Rahman al-Lahem, speaking about the sentence handed down to his client, who was the victim of a gang rape in Saudi Arabia. She is sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in jail. From the Shia minority in Saudi Arabia, the woman, who is now 19, was gang-raped 14 times a year and a half ago in an eastern province of the kingdom. Despite the brutal rape, the woman was punished for violating laws on segregation of the sexes, as she was in the car of an unrelated man when she was raped, and unrelated men and women are forbidden from congregating. When she appealed her original sentence of 90 lashes, her sentence was more than doubled, as the judges accused her of trying to manipulate the media. Seven men were sentenced to prison for the rape, the least sentence being less than one year and the heaviest sentence being five years. The rapists could have received the death penalty.
