Saudi torture of women rampant, says Amnesty
(The Independent, September 27, 2000)
 By Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent

The statistics say it all. In just 10 years, 28 women have been executed in Saudi Arabia, six of them in the past 14 months, without fair trials, beheaded or shot through the head - the Saudis will not say which - often on the basis of uncorroborated confessions. The most recent was Mukhtiara Khadem Hussein, a Pakistani woman judicially executed on 18 July because of a conviction for drug trafficking. Of these, 17 were foreign nationals, a "disproportionate percentage" since foreign nationals are only 25 per cent of the population. A Saudi woman was beheaded in public, according to independent sources only seconds before her daughter was executed for the same crime: murdering her husband, the daughter's father. Noura bint Ubeid bin Aqla Zuebi and Aisha bint Muhammed bin Daydan bin Aqlaa Al-Zuebi were executed on 11 December 1992 in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, scarcely 18 months after the West "saved" Saudi Arabia from Iraqi aggression.
For the second time in six months, Amnesty International has turned its humanitarian searchlight on Saudi Arabia's justice "system" - the quotation marks are essential - demanding to know why the kingdom's judiciary and regal authorities should subject women to arbitrary detention, arrest, flogging and execution. An Amnesty report last March on human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia provoked the fury of the regime - but, at the least, a limited discussion within the ruling élite. The condemnation of the pro-Saudi press was predictable.Today's Amnesty document, a painful account of the torture, imprisonment and punishment of women in the Kingdom, will undoubtedly produce similar results. Tales of the rape of Third World domestic servants by Saudi nationals and the brutal lashing of unnumbered Filipino women by so-called "judicial" courts will enrage the Saudi authorities. So they should.
Here, for example, is the account of a 53-year-old Filipino woman, Violetta Calminero, who endured 150 lashes. "The three sessions of 50 lashes were administered in the space of five days ... the lashes were administered in a room with three mutawaeen [religious police] sitting at a table. I was made to lean over a chair fully clothed with my abaya [a gown]... I noticed that if women squirmed or moved, the lashes became more intense." Other women talked of being beaten by "religious" police after their arrests, or of being assaulted by husbands who demanded divorce. "Sometimes my husband would drag me around the floor by my hair," a Saudi woman told Amnesty. "There were constant beatings with the head-rope. Towards the end, my husband would lock the bedroom door at night, to stop me [supposedly] going to have sex with a neighbour."

Iran

Tens of thousands of women have been arrested on political charges and
severely tortured and executed. Many have died under torture. Pregnant
women have not been spared either. Hundreds of them were executed with
their unborn child. Women of all ages from 13-years-old youngsters like
Fatemeh Mesbah, Mojgan Jamshidi, 14, Ezzat Mesbah, 15, and Maryam
Ghodsi-Mo'ab, 16, to 70-year-old grandmothers like Ettesamossadat Karbasi,
Arasteh Qolivand, 56, Soqra Davari, 54, and Ma'asoomeh Shadmani, 50, have
been executed. The names and particulars of thousands of executed women are
documented in the list of 14,000 victims of political executions.
According to a "religious" decree virgin women prisoners must be raped
before execution. The night before execution, a Guard conducts the rape.
The next day, the religious judge at the prison writes a marriage
certificate and sends it to the victim's family along with a box of sweets.
Note (1) of Article 102 of the penal code on Ta'azirat (penitences) states:
"Women who appear on streets and in public without the (prescribed)
'Islamic hijab' will be condemned to penitences of 74 strikes of lash."
Female government employees who violate the dress code are also liable to
temporary suspension from work up to two years, expulsion and indefinite
deprivation of any employment in the public service. In some cases, the
punitive action leads to the death of the women. On September 2, 1993, in
Tehran, Bahareh Vojdani, a 20-year-old girl, was stopped by the vice squads
for mal-veiling. When she protested, the Guards shot and killed her as
people were watching.
In June 1994, Agence France Presse quoted the Iranian press as reporting
that the regime's security officials had warned women against "improper
laughter" in the streets. They also instructed them to observe full dress
codes before "looking out of the windows" of their homes.