What would be the offcial policy on this for the Green Party USA ?

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Two recent Horror Stories from the Islamic world.

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December 1, 2007
Saudi Rape Case Spurs Calls for Reform
By RASHEED ABOU-ALSAMH
JIDDA, Saudi Arabia, Nov. 30 — The case of a 20-year-old woman who was sentenced to be lashed after pressing charges against seven men who raped her and a male companion has provoked a rare and angry public debate in Saudi Arabia, leading to renewed calls for reform of the Saudi judicial system.

The woman, known here only as the Qatif girl because she comes from the Eastern town of that name, was initially sentenced to 90 lashes for being alone with a man to whom she was not married.

Her outspoken human rights lawyer appealed the sentence and brought down the wrath of the court, which doubled the woman’s sentence and stripped her lawyer of his license to practice.

The case is now being appealed to the kingdom’s highest court. Human rights activists said the treatment of the woman, the man who was raped with her and her lawyer call into question Saudi justice and make a mockery of the courts’ claim to fairness.

“The system has to be transformed from top to bottom,” said Ali Alyami, the executive director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia. “Judges in Saudi Arabia have no more power than the princes want them to have.”

The Saudi legal system is based on a strict Wahabi interpretation of Islamic law. Like all institutions here, it is subject to the absolute authority of the monarchy.

Saudi officials have faced a firestorm of embarrassing international publicity. American presidential candidates denounced the sentence on the campaign trail. During the Annapolis peace conference this week, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, faced a barrage of questions about the case and promised that the judiciary would review it.

The rape took place a year and a half ago in Qatif, a small Shiite town in the Eastern Province, center of the Saudi Arabia’s oil industry. Judges there provoked outrage in many quarters in the kingdom — and vociferous criticism abroad — when they increased the sentence on appeal in mid-November.

In the weeks since then, government authorities have ordered the woman’s lawyer, Abdulrahman al-Lahem, a well-known human rights activist, to stop talking to the news media, and issued similar orders to the woman and her husband.

The Ministry of Justice and two prominent judges have harshly criticized the woman, suggesting that she was engaged in immoral behavior at the time of the attack.

The Justice Ministry published two statements on its Web site in recent days, saying that the woman had confessed to engaging in illicit acts and was undressed in a car before the rape.

Mr. Lahem, her lawyer, denied these accusations and said neither she or her male friend had confessed to any such acts. The lawyer is now suing the Ministry of Information and Culture for having distributed the Justice Ministry’s statements to the news media through the state-run Saudi Press Agency.

Human Rights Watch issued a statement this week insisting that the Justice Ministry “stop publishing statements aimed at damaging the reputation of a young Saudi rape victim who spoke out publicly about her ordeal and her efforts to find justice.” The ministry stopped short of accusing the rape victim of adultery, or zina in Arabic, which could carry the death penalty, for being alone with the man whom she met in his car on the night of the rape in 2006.

Mr. Lahem has complained that the judges seem to have based their conclusions about the events on the night of the rape on testimony of the seven rapists, who have been sentenced to five to seven years in jail. Under Islamic law, two people can be accused of adultery only if caught in the act by four male witnesses of good character.

Ibrahim bin Salih al-Khudairi, a judge on the Riyadh Appeals Court, said in an interview in the newspaper Okaz on Nov. 27 that if he had been a judge in the Qatif court, he would have sentenced the woman, her male companion and the seven rapists to death, and that they were lucky not to get the death penalty.

The woman met with an Associated Press reporter in November, before the court ordered her and her lawyer to stop talking to reporters. Describing the sentence as a “big shock,” she said that she had trouble sleeping and that her hands were trembling, The A.P. reported.

Farida Deif, a Human Rights Watch researcher, interviewed the woman in December 2006. Her report directly contradicts the version of the events put forward by Saudi justice officials.

In her interview with the human rights group, the woman said she had given a photo of herself to a male friend. Years later, when she was 19 and engaged to another man, she asked for the photo back. She agreed to meet him in his car in downtown Qatif. Another car blocked their path when they were 15 minutes from her house, she said.

“Two people got out of their car and stood on either side of our car,” she said. “The man on my side had a knife. I screamed.”

She and her companion were taken to a building in Awwamiyah, a working-class neighborhood of Qatif, where they were raped repeatedly by seven men over several hours, she said.

Mr. Lahem, the lawyer, had his license suspended for “disrespecting” the court after he supposedly raised his voice in court. He faces a disciplinary hearing in Riyadh on Dec. 5.

He said that he had not wanted to make waves about the case but that the doubling of the punishment forced him to go public. He had hoped to keep things quiet, he said, and then apply for a royal pardon from King Abdullah, who has pardoned convicted human rights advocates in the past. That may still happen.

Neither Mr. Lahem nor the woman’s husband have been given a copy of the verdict despite repeated requests, which has delayed filing of the appeal.

Yet a copy of it was apparently leaked to Alsaha, a conservative Saudi Web site.

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'I still cannot believe this is happening,' says teddy bear teacher as mob bays for her blood
By DAVID WILLIAMS and CHRISTIAN GYSIN

Spitting hatred, thousands of hardline Islamists called for British teacher Gillian Gibbons to be shot yesterday.

They streamed out of mosques in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, shouting: "Kill her, kill her, kill her by firing squad."

One man brandished a giant sword, others carried axes, clubs, ceremonial swords and knives.

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Pictures of the 54-year-old, who was sentenced to 15 days in jail for insulting Islam by letting her class call a teddy bear Mohammed, were set alight or trampled into the dirt.

The protests came as devastated Mrs Gibbons was allowed to phone her family in Liverpool for the first time since her ordeal began on Sunday.

Her son John, 25, said: "One of the things my mum said was 'I don't want any resentment towards Muslim people'. She's holding up quite well."

Earlier, during a visit from her lawyer, Mrs Gibbons described how her dream of working with children in Sudan had turned into a nightmare.

"I still cannot believe this," she said, "Never in my life would I have ever thought I would be accused of deliberately insulting someone or something. I am simply not like that.

The divorced mother of two, who began working in Khartoum in August, added: "I just feel so sad. I came to Sudan looking forward to things going smoothly and safely. Now it's all over for me and I will be sent home. It has been a nightmare.

"It was my dream to come here so why should I have come and then insulted Islam?

"If I was that type of person I would have never come in the first place or I could have done that sort of thing in London or Liverpool."

Her lawyer Kamal Djizouri said he had been able to deliver fresh clothing to the detention centre where she is being held under tight security. He said the teacher was in a comfortable room with a bed, water and access to a toilet.

It was not clear when, or if, she would be moved to the squalid Omdurman prison where prosecutors said she would serve her sentence.

The teacher was said to have been in tears as she pleaded her innocence during an eight-hour trial behind closed doors on Thursday and to have been stunned by the jail sentence.

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There had been hopes after her conviction that she would be freed early. But officials in Khartoum suggested last night that the outpouring of emotions on the streets had made this less likely.

Protesters, who had heard hardline sermons at Friday prayers, waved banners proclaiming "Punishment, punishment, punishment", and chanted: "Shame, shame on the UK" and "No tolerance - execution."

Others yelled: "No one lives who insults the prophet."

Hundreds of police looked on but did nothing to disrupt the protest, a clear indication, observers said, that it had been condoned by the fundamentalist government.

Western journalists and observers were told to leave after demonstrators headed towards them, moving their hands across their throats in a gesture of execution.

Estimates of the size of the crowd varied, with one report suggesting several thousand had joined the protest. Many had arrived in the city in crowded cars and trucks.

Police were also on guard outside the private Unity school where Mrs Gibbons worked.

The case began with a classroom project on animals in September. Mrs Gibbons asked one of her seven-year-old pupils to bring in a teddy bear, then called on the class to name it. They chose Mohammed, the name of one of the most popular boys.

But an office assistant complained to the Ministry of Education that Mrs Gibbons had insulted the prophet by putting his name to an animal or toy.

Hardline clerics, who hold considerable influence with the government, have sought to whip up public anger, calling her action part of a Western plot to damage Islam.

The conviction of Mrs Gibbons was seen as an attempt by the government to appease hardliners while trying to avert British anger with a relatively light sentence.

She could have received up to 40 lashes, six months in prison and a fine if convicted on a more serious charge of inciting religious hatred.

Muslim organisations in Britain united in their condemnation of the verdict.

Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said Sudanese authorities had "grossly over-reacted in this sad affair".

"Gillian should never have been arrested, let alone charged and convicted of committing a crime. We hope she will be able to return home without much further delay."

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Ali Alhadithi, president of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies in the UK and Ireland, said: "We are deeply concerned that the verdict to jail a teacher, due to what's likely to be an innocent mistake, is gravely disproportionate.

"What we have here is a case of cultural misunderstandings. We hope the Sudanese authorities will take immediate action to secure a safe release for Gillian Gibbons."

The Muslim Public Affairs Committee, a political advocacy group, said the prosecution was "abominable and defies common sense".

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, said Mrs Gibbons's conviction was "an absurdly disproportionate response to what is at worst a cultural faux pas".

At the Sudanese Embassy in London, spokesman Dr Khalid Al Mubarak said they had been bombarded with angry emails and phone calls.

But he added: "If a lesson can be learned, it's that anybody going abroad should learn about the culture and orientation before taking any job."