Lahadapurage Daneris Ariyawathie, the Sri Lankan domestic worker we all cringed for after discovering her Saudi employers allegedly hammered 23 nails into her body, has had surgery to remove 18 of them. The rest were still imbedded in her muscles. Oh sick,sick people.
Those sick sick people have been arrested. I am shocked. Happy shocked.
Colombo, Sri Lanka (CNN) — A Saudi employer and his wife, who are accused of torturing a Sri Lankan housemaid by hammering nails into her body, have been arrested in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, officials at the Sri Lankan External Affairs Ministry said Monday.
Saudi Arabian authorities could not be reached immediately for verification. No further details were available.
The two suspects have not been named.
Doctors at a Sri Lankan hospital operated for three hours Friday to remove 18 nails and metal particles allegedly hammered into the arms, legs and forehead of a maid by her Saudi employer.
Dr. Kamal Weeratunga said the surgical team in the southern town of Kamburupitiya pulled nails ranging from about 1 to 3 inches from Lahadapurage Daneris Ariyawathie’s body. He said doctors have not yet removed four small metal particles embedded in her muscles.
“She is under heavy antibiotics but in a stable condition,” Weeratunga said.
Sri Lankan officials, meanwhile, met with Saudi diplomats in Colombo to urge an investigation into the incident.
“It was cruel treatment, which should be roundly condemned,” said L.K. Ruhunuge of the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment.
She was held down by her employer’s wife while the employer hammered the heated nails, Ruhunuge told CNN. She apparently had complained to the couple that she was being overworked, Ruhunuge said.
The nails were hammered into her arms and legs while one was on her forehead, he said.
“Most of the wounds are superficial but five to 10 are somewhat deep,” said Dr. Prabath Gajadeera of the Base Hospital. “Luckily, none of the organs is affected. Only nerves and blood vessels are affected.”
Kabobfest covered this, and to my horror, two of their commentors wrote that Sharia Law should be applied to the Saudi couple. And people wonder where Islamophobia comes from?
This reminds me of another jaw-dropping report when a Saudi Arabian court inquired of hospitals if it is medically possible to sever the spinal cord of a man who injured another in a fight, in compliance with the victim’s desire to see Shariah Law applied.
Also according to the Emirate News 247 (what a stockpile of incredible stories): A Saudi man will be lashed 3,000 times and jailed for 10 years after he used an axe to chop off his sister’s hand during a fight. Isn’t he supposed to just have his own hand cut off? A Saudi teenager who shot a pistol into the air, will get 100 lashes (unless he repents and memorizes some verses from the Quran). Maybe, if I was a Saudi teen boy, I would choose the lashes over a prison term.
Makes me want to run screaming, I can’t believe we share a border with this country.
I reside in KSA, read bwt this and felt …. GOOD!
Thx kinzi,
H.
Kinzi I am sorry but i felt some insult in your last line, because of that country the Islamic world wouldn’t have existed, that country have the sacred place for All Muslims, from that Country Came Mohammed Peace be upon him. at least in that country they are punishing those who commit crimes with a severe it’s true that they don’t punish all of them specially the higher ups but it’s still better than nothing, when the punishment is hard it gives some people a chance to think before doing something stupid. Sharing a border with this country is 100 million better than sharing a relation with a beast called Israel.
An eye for an eye! Isn’t that what the old testament says!
I believe in the death penalty for rape, child molestation and premeditated murder.
The lashes thing isn’t a bad idea, do you have a clue how damaging 3000 lashes are? (I would rather they cut off his hand).
As for the sopinal chord thing it was the plaintifs own request, and as long they are using their own twisted version of Shari3a law well let them.
We on the other hand have adapted and modified french law, and not to the best advantage.
A woman doesn’t have the full legal right (yet) to divorce her husband. she still can’t give her children the nationality…
We also need the honour crimes to be punished severely…
Let us not confuse Shariah law with Saudi law. Just because a country says “we will apply Shariah law to this situation” does not mean it has not abused, manipulated, or twisted what within Islamic jurisprudence is just.
Just sayin’.
Ahmad Hamdan, oh shut up!
Kinzi, I see no difference between the death penalty for a killer and nailing a person for nailing another! It’s the eye for an eye concept, I just believe the issue looks very bad because we’re breaking it into details, i.e. we no longer mention that execution is basically ‘doing to someone the same thing he did to another’, but call it the death penalty.
I feel apathy towards the death penalty, nor I am with or against it, but I truly feel the issue was driven further just because the ones calling for it were the nuts of Saudi Arabia.
Omar:
Thank you for being such a polite person and respectful you Mr. I hate Islam, go get a life kid and learn how to speak to others.
Gah, yes, I read about the nail thing. Sick, sick people. Back in Denver, we had a well-publicized case where a Saudi couple imprisoned a maid from Indonesia for years, beat her, raped her (I think), confiscated her passport, and wouldn’t pay her for her work or let her go outside. It went on for years until she escaped and they were arrested.
Saudis. Again.
You can’t believe we share a border with this country, I can’t believe you’re judging the whole country based on what judges there say or do. Tayyeb can you believe we share a border with Israel?
Besides, if Islamophobia is only caused my Muslims applying the Sharee3a law to sick people like the couple above, then I don’t think I would mind people fearing us. Do you not see the couple guilty enough? Shouldn’t people do to others what they would have done unto them? In my opinion, someone who thinks a person deserves to have nails hammered into her body just because she’s Sri-Lankan and works for them, deserve to have every nail hammered into their bodies as well!
The law wouldn’t be applied to them if they did something that wasn’t on purpose for example, but for the woman to hold down the maid and watch her sick husband as he hammers the nails into her body with cold blood? That’s terror! And having the law applied to them would make people think a gazillion times before they do something as twisted as this, and that’s the whole purpose of the law, it’s not to get revenge, it’s to teach them, and everyone who thinks like them a good lesson.
That still doesn’t mean the whole population of Saudi Arabia is “sick” and I don’t think you or anyone else should generalize.
Have a good day.
these people and their sick beliefs are not from a god that I would want to fallow,I don’t care what they believe or what god they call a god,or what his name is and if this is a god then he is sick also.
Rusty
The administration of justice is never for the light-hearted or the squeemish but it is necessary.
Haitham, at first I took your as positive, but after the others I think you may have been sarcastic…which is it? Good that justice may be done or ‘oh great, another Saudi Basher’?
Ahmad, I am sorry you felt insulted. Does honoring Saudi Arabia for all it has meant to Islam mean you will not condemn barbaric punishment that slanders the Islam of today? Umm Farouq mentions that Saudi Law could be an ‘abused, manipulated, or twisted’ version of Sharia.
Every country on earth has a means of punishing crime, and for most, this form and practice of rule for punishment ended a long, long time ago. I agree that sharing a border with Israel is no picnic, but even Jews stopped stoning adulterers 400 years before Christ. But this post isn’t about Israel.
on August 30, 2010 at 11:09 pm I was not sarcasting!
Haitham, thanks for clarifying…I thought not, but did want to make sure since the other comments surprised me so!
Umm Farouq, well said. I looked up a simple concept of this and found:
“Diyya is compensation paid to the heirs of a victim. In Arabic the word means both blood money and ransom.
The Quran specifies the principle of Qisas (ie, retaliation), but prescribes that one should seek compensation (Diyya) and not demand retribution.
We have prescribed for thee therein ‘a life for a life, and an eye for an eye, and a nose for a nose, and an ear for an ear, and a tooth for a tooth, and for wounds retaliation;’ but whoso remits it, it is an expiation for him, but he whoso will not judge by what God has revealed, these be the unjust.”
It seems Diyya should rule Qisas, following the mercy of Allah, to be completely just.
Yet, as seen by the first commenter, Saudi is held blameless and in honor due to her privileged place of position, yet none are allowed to criticize a travesty of Qisas without Diyya? Maybe I am just not around for these conversations, but I sure would like to be.
Walid, thanks for stopping in!! The OT stated that, but it was to limit excessive punishment (as it is with Islam, converse to the Code of Hammurabi prior to Levitical Law). I haven’t been able to find the exact time, but it has not been practiced, but paying for damages, like the Diyya in Islam, has been:
http://www.abc.net.au/religion/articles/2010/07/08/2948363.htm
“One could conclude that all of the above is beside the point today, since there seems to be virtually unanimous consensus in the West that mutilation and physical torture are themselves crimes and should not, therefore, ever be employed as forms of punishment for similar (or dissimilar) crimes.
However, unless such opinions are developed within overall normative traditions that govern human life and activity, such opinions have no real foundation. As such, they can just as easily be abandoned when popular opinion changes.
When this happens, those who are not anchored in normative traditions that claim transcendent warrants have no basis upon which to approve or disapprove social changes. Their own particular, mutable social milieu is all they have.
This becomes especially evident when one observes western reactions to Muslim regimes that practice mutilation and torture as forms of punishment. Most westerners simply presume cultural superiority and look down on the “primitive” practices of such unenlightened Muslims.
(The irony, of course, is that many westerners are also cultural relativists who reject any absolute moral claims made by their own religious or normative traditions, which they think they have surpassed.)
Yet these Muslims themselves would claim that these practices are mandated by their own tradition, and consequently have a transcendental warrant. They would then accuse their western critics of having no such tradition upon which to base their disapproval other than their subjective tastes.
But my point here is that Jews and Christians, rooted in their respective traditions, have good reasons to oppose mutilation and torture, since their traditions have developed to the point where they can judge these cruel practices to be contrary to the protection of human dignity.
And, furthermore, Jews and Christians are able sympathetically to encourage Muslims to find similar developments in their own tradition, which is a tradition that has many times seen itself to have much in common theologically and morally with Judaism and Christianity.”
(end of quote)
For me as a Christian, Jesus negated the eye-for-an-eye in his fulfillment of the law in Matthew 5:38 ” 38″You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’[g] 39But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
I agree with the death penalty for premeditated murder and repeat sex offenders of children, not so much to pay for the lives the criminal took, but also their debt to society and to keep society safer. I do not think the law should be allowed to be twisted to the whims of the plaintiff.
I agree that Jordan has done a good job (especially comparatively!), I did not know it was the French model. I believe the other aspects you mentioned will come in time. And yes, I also hope so-called honor crimes will be called (and punished as) the premeditated murder that they are.
Omar, let’s try and be kind to one another, ok? No need to be rude to Ahmad. Thanks for visiting with your comment. I realized I responded to your comment inside Walid’s above, please take a look
.
Ahmad, I am sorry I didn’t get to his comment with a correction before you had to yourself. I am not sure I see anything in his comment that makes him an Islam hater, what did I miss?
Marvin, yes, there have been such cases in California, New York, Washington and Florida as well as Colorado. As I have googled around to find them, it seems there are too many to count, and in Saudi, Kuwait and the Emirates, there is a problem we don’t have in Jordan: the maids commit suicide
Rand, khalto, please read this again before accusing me of generalizing. Did I say the whole population of Saudi Arabia, or did I mention two people?
Actually, after reading a dozen or so stories of sheer torture (not just a beating) of domestic workers by Saudis, Kuwaits, and Khalijiis, I am ready to accuse 50 more of them of being sick sick people:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/02/world/middleeast/02domestic.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=Maids%20abuse%20Kuwait&st=cse
It doesn’t seem like Sharia is being implemented against them and is not making them think a gazillion times before treating human beings like insects to be crushed underfoot.
Like I assume of Umm Farouq, I would like to see Diyya override Qasis.
in Sharia.
This summer, I invited a bunch of American friends to read my blog so they could see that most of my blogger friends are not for the harsher aspects of Sharia Law. I am pretty surprised to see the comments here, and sad that they may not believe me now.
Will torturing the Saudi couple help this maid’s family pay for the surgery and live n peace? Or will $500,000?
As much as I have complained about Jordan’s criminal justice system, I see now I should be very very thankful.
Maysaloon, It is indeed not, but I will never believe in torture as a form of judicially acceptable punishment for a crime. Death penalty, yes, to pay the debt of the victim, society and to protect society. But cutting off parts, stoning, hammering, no.
I stopped being surprised long ago, my father have witnessed more than 15 public beheadings which still happen though discreetly as to not get western attention.
they do however try to convince the victim’s family of dropping the death penalty verdict in exchange for money (donated to the poor) and lately a lot of them agree.
I found it humorous that some people “took offence” while others brought up Israel?!!! instead of condemning barbarism you are quick to defend it with silly excuses.
After their oil runs out and Americans/Europeans/Palestinians/Jordanians etc.. are no longer interested in working there they’d probably go back to riding camels. The piss of which according to Saudi “scientists” cures cancer.
Ayash, what a terrible thing to have witnessed beheadings.
I am also not too excited when people get offended by a lesser issue. As for Saudi, I would hope their would be more left of the petro-legacy than just camels. AND…had no idea about that last sentence!