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Rights Advocate Fights Back
Saudi human rights lawyer Abdul-Rahman al-Lahem holds the letter informing him of his license revocation and a disciplinary hearing.
(By Faiza Saleh Ambah -- The Washington Post)
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Obaikan said that the woman and her companion both confessed and that she was not sentenced to a harsher punishment for adultery because of the extenuating circumstances.
Midway through the show, the woman's husband called in, saying his wife was guilty only of trying to get her photos back. "I have forgiven her for that. I know why she was there. Why can't you forgive?" he asked.
The woman's husband, who also has not been identified, said in a telephone interview that his wife has tried to kill herself several times and is taking medication to treat depression brought on by the rape.
"We are keeping all the latest statements away from her because she is still traumatized by what happened. She just sits for hours, quiet, alone," he said.
The case has put a spotlight on the Saudi judicial system, which is run in accordance with the country's official Wahhabi school of thought, a strict form of Islam. The kingdom follows Islamic law, or sharia, and many sentences are left to the discretion of judges, a practice recently criticized by a growing number of Saudis.
The foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, speaking Tuesday from Annapolis, where he was attending a U.S.-hosted conference on Middle East peace, said the judiciary would review the case, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.
King Abdullah, who took the throne in 2005, has tried to introduce political and judicial reform and has allowed greater press freedoms. Discussion of rape cases in the news media is thought by some Saudis to have led to the opening of the country's first rape clinic in the capital, Riyadh, last year.
