A Saudi family who suffered from a series of problems has accused its Indonesian housemaid of causing them by using witchcraft to punish them for bad treatment of her, a newspaper reported on Tuesday.
The maid had confessed to the police that she did cast a malicious spell on the family but later retracted her confession after colleagues warned her she could be executed for sorcery in the conservative Gulf Kingdom. Yet the court sentenced her to five years in prison.
Just a few weeks after she was jailed, police told her she would be released under a pardon of thousands of prisoners announced by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia following his return from a treatment trip abroad.
“Police told her employers to finish procedures because they want to deport her but they refused, saying she must first break the magic spell she cast on the family,” the Arabic language daily Sabq said in a report from Riyadh.
“The mother believes the housemaid is responsible for all problems that have befallen the family, including her divorce from her husband, the divorce of her daughter from her husband and her elder son’s decision to leave the house on the grounds he no longer stands the family…she gave police some pieces of papers she had found at home written in Arabic and Indonesian showing the housemaid was behind those problems.”
The paper said the mother offered to finish procedures to deport her employee provided the maid dismantles the spell. But the maid told the police “breaking the magic spell requires that she should be in Indonesia not abroad.”
“The mother is still refusing to sign the maid’s papers so she can be deported while the maid insists she can not break the spell in Saudi Arabia.”
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