June 22, 2011
The “blood money” to be paid to spare the life of an Indonesian maid from being executed in Saudi Arabia will not automatically free her from a murder conviction, the Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.
Ministry spokesman Michael Tene told the Jakarta Globe that paying the Rp 4.6 billion ($534,000) compensation, or diyat, will only release Darsem from the death penalty she is facing.
After the diyat is paid, he said, there will be further court proceedings for the judge to decided whether Darsem will have to serve a prison term or be freed from all charges.
"We certainly hope that she will be free from all charges," he said.
A team from the Foreign Ministry was departing for Saudi Arabia on Wednesday night to supervise the payment process.
Michael said the money was transferred to the Indonesian Embassy in Riyadh on Tuesday, following the approval of the House of Representatives' Commission I to take the money out of the ministry's citizen protection budget.
Darsem was convicted in a Riyadh court in May 2009 of murdering her Yemeni employer and was sentenced to death despite her plea that she had killed her employer in self-defense because he had attempted to rape her.
In January this year, the victim’s family forgave Darsem and agreed to spare her if she could afford to pay compensation to the family
(X the JG)
( the easiest half a million $$ those Arabs ever made, you tell me where does a maid or her family ever going to get that kind of money if the government hadn't stepped in? If they had that kind of money the poor woman did not have any need to hire herself out as slave-labour to those Arabs) siK
wo 22 jun 2011 - 8:41