RIYADH: A Saudi employer whose wife tortured the family’s Indonesian housemaid to death has been sentenced to nine months in prison for failing to intervene and save the maid’s life.

The man has already served six months in prison awaiting trial, while his wife, who has been in an Abha prison for the last 11 months, is scheduled to be sentenced for manslaughter on July 14 by a court in Khamis Mushayt.

“There is another case of cold-blooded murder from Eastern Province in which a Saudi employer is being tried for beating his maid to death,” said Wishnu Krishnamurthi, vice consul at the Indonesian Embassy. “The police have found the sticks used in the assaults and the blood-stained clothes of the maid, Suryapi Dulbari, 31,” he added.

The Saudi family has offered to pay SR200,000 in blood money to settle the private rights of the woman’s family.

In the Khamis Mushayt case, the court has already found the man guilty of negligence and disregard for the maid who refused to eat in protest at the beatings she suffered at the hands of his wife. Lawyers expect the wife, a teacher, may receive more than two years in prison.

The maid’s family has accepted blood money in compensation for the death.

This case has been widely publicized in Indonesia, where social activists have demanded Jakarta intervenes to stop such kinds of abuse.

In Kuwait, an Indonesian housemaid was allegedly murdered this month, while another Indonesian maid was beaten to death in Malaysia early this week. Malaysian police have detained a man and his sister for allegedly killing the maid, who was in her 20s.

“Such cases of torture and deaths are being reported on a regular basis,” said a recent report compiled by the International Labor Organization.