Human rights groups have appealed to Saudi authorities not to deliberately sever the spinal cord of a man who allegedly paralyzed someone else in a fight. Amnesty International has said that would violate United Nations Convention on Torture as well as principles of medical ethics. Could the Saudis be backing down, well, we'd go live to CNN’s Mohammed Jamjoom in Abu Dhabi. Mohammed, tell us what is the latest here. Obviously, this has surprised and shocked a lot of people who’ve heard about this case recently.
Suzanne, a high ranking Saudi government official told me just a short while ago that the president of the court in Tabuk, that’s the province in Saudi Arabia where this case is happening has denied, has officially denied that paralysis as a punishment was ever actually considered by the court there. But here is where it gets complicated, as do most cases in the Saudi Arabia get complicated. In fact, the president of the court also gave an interview to a Saudi newspaper just a few hours ago. And he's quoted to saying that they actually did reach out to the hospitals in Saudi Arabia trying to ascertain if this kind of surgery to sever man's spine could be done. But he adds this was only done in an effort to convince the plaintiff that this kind of surgery was impossibility that it could not actually be performed in Saudi Arabia. Ultimately now the president of the court is saying that the kind of judgment that would be rendered in this would only include the payment of blood money by the plaintiff to the victim and the victim's family .Susan~So we have seen a number of these controversial cases in Saudi Arabia recently that have been quite shocking actually. Why does this keep happening?
Susan, Saudi Arabia practices the very puritanical version of Islam called Wahhabism. And in that version of Islam, you still see "eye for an eye" type punishments being doled out. Judges there have wide discretion and latitude to try to impose the law, enforce Islam the way they see fit and to dole out the kind of punishments they think are appropriate. But what you are seeing recently are more and more of these controversial cases emerging. In the past few years, we have seen the case of child bride who was refused her request to get a divorce from a man much old than her. We have seen the case of a 19-year-old girl who was raped and then she was sentenced to a punishment harsher than the punishment that some of her attackers got. Lately, we saw a sentence of a man who was accused of sorcery in Saudi Arabia, he was sentence to die. That case is still pending, and because these cases are emerging, it’s really showing the societal struggle that’s going on in Saudi Arabia between the hardliners and between the moderates and the progressives, the moderates and the progressives, they know this kind of cases they will give Saudi Arabia a black eye in the international community, and they want to see a streamlining of justice system there and they want to see the justice system in the court modernized; they wanna get rid of what they consider to be this draconian type of justice, Susan.
Mohammed, thanks you very much. |