Maid held in Saudi for sorcery

Saudi Arabia’s feared religious police arrested an Indonesian housemaid on charges of casting a magic spell on a family of 18 members.

Members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice seized the maid after she was reported by her employers in the central town of Al Rass.

A search of the house resulted in finding beads, threads, needles, amulets and other magic items hidden by the unnamed maid in various parts of the employer’s house.

“The maid was accused of casting a magic spell on the 18 members of the Saudi family… she confessed to having practiced sorcery on the family,” Sabq daily said, quoting Commission spokesman Abdullah Al Mansoor.

It said all the amulets were taken to the Commission office, where they were “neutralised and dismantled.”

Witchcraft is strictly banned in conservative Saudi Arabia and those found to be involved in such acts are imprisoned for long periods of time. Some sorcerers have also been executed over the past years.

Wife jailed for betraying husband

A Saudi court sentenced an Arab woman to six months in prison and ordered her lashed 100 times on charges of betraying her crippled husband with other men.

The unnamed Saudi husband had reported his wife to members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, accusing her of going out with other men for money, according to the Arabic language daily Al Madina.

The husband said he found more than SR50,000, contraceptive pills and seven mobile phones in his wife’s bag while a senior Saudi employee she had known for four years transferred nearly SR140,000 to her bank account during that period.

“Just after the wife was sentenced by the court, her husband divorced her,” the paper said in a report from the Western Red Sea port of Jeddah.

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