Maid sentenced to death for child's murder

A Saudi court sentenced an Indonesian housemaid to death after she was convicted of murdering the four-year old daughter of her employer by stabbing her while asleep.

The maid had confessed to stabbing Tala Al Shahri while she was asleep in her bed at her house in the western port of Yanbu to revenge mistreatment by her employers.

The murder took place while Tala’s parents were at work. When the girl’s mother returned home, the maid refused to open the door and barricaded herself in Tala’s bedroom before the civil defence arrived and smashed open the door.

Tala’s father suffered serious injuries in a road crash as he rushed back home after his wife phoned him about the maid’s attack on their daughter.

Sabq newspaper said the court on Sunday also sentenced the maid to eight months in prison and ordered her lashed 200 times for attempting a suicide inside prison. They said a representative of the Indonesian embassy in Riyadh was present in court.

The maid could be saved from the gallows in return for diya (blood money) but Tala’s father has already made clear he would never pardon her.

Shepherd found hanging at sheep barn

A Sudanese shepherd in Saudi Arabia was found hanging in a sheep barn and police said preliminary investigation showed he had committed a suicide. His employer was checking his sheep at the barn in his farm in the central province of Alqaseem when he saw the man dangling by a rope tied to the barn’s roof.

“Initial investigation shows that the man had committed a suicide…we are still probing his motive,” police spokesman Colonel Fahd Al Hidan told Okaz daily.
 

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