If you’d like a case study in where ‘tolerance’ leads, this is it. A Saudi preacher repeatedly raped and tortured his five year-old daughter before finally murdering her. The judge in the case said that blood money and time served (a few months) was sufficient punishment.
The ensuing backlash has sucked the Saudi Royal family into the case.
Via the UK Independent:
Fayhan al-Ghamdi was set to be released after agreeing to pay “blood money” to the mother of his daughter Lama, who suffered multiple injuries including a crushed skull, broken back, broken ribs, a broken left arm and extensive bruising and burns. Social workers say she had also been repeatedly raped and burnt.
Al-Ghamdi, who regularly appears on Saudi television, admitted using a cane and cables to inflict the injuries after doubting his five-year-old daughter’s virginity and taking her to a doctor, according to the campaign group Women to Drive.
Like Christopher Dorner, it appears that al-Ghamdi has defenders…
Despite the country’s notoriously strict legal system however, activists say the law protects fathers from being executed for murdering their children.
Rather than getting the death penalty or receiving a long prison sentence for the crime, Al-Ghamdi served only a few months in jail before a judge ruled the prosecution could only seek ‘blood money’.
Albawaba News reported the judge as saying: “Blood money and the time the defendant had served in prison since Lama’s death suffices as punishment.”
The misogynistic icing on the cake? The ‘blood money’ cited by the judge that al-Ghamdi was ordered to pay was only half the amount it would have been had his daughter been a son…
The £31,000 blood money Al-Ghamdi agreed to pay is considered compensation under Islamic law, although it is only half the amount that would have been paid had Lama been a boy.
The Saudi Royal family has seen fit to publicly assure people that al-Ghamdi will not be released.
Based on what Walid has discovered about the Royal Family’s public pronouncements about high ranking Saudi princes, we suggest that someone visit the jail regularly and ask to see al-Ghamdi behind bars.