JEDDAH, 1 December — A Shariah court sentenced a Saudi woman to one year in jail and 200 lashes for torturing her Indonesian maid who later strangled herself to death using an electric wire.

A forensic report showed the maid had injuries on the head, chest, neck, face, back, arms, legs and the abdominal area, indicating she had been systematically beaten.

The maid was found dead at her employer’s house in Tabuk, 1,300 kilometers northwest of the Saudi capital, with a wire around her neck and tied to the door.

The forensic report indicated the maid committed suicide, but the judge was convinced she was driven to it because of maltreatment by the housewife.

Witnesses told the court they saw serious injuries on the maid’s body and that she had told them they were caused by the housewife who sometimes used a hot iron to punish her. The housewife admitted she had prevented the Indonesian maid from leaving the house, but also told the judge that her husband had not been paying her salary regularly.

The woman will be given the lashes in 10 weekly sessions of 20 each. The ruling was upheld by the high court in Makkah.

The Saudi woman, however, refused to admit that the maid committed suicide because of her cruelties. She told the court that the maid had received a letter from her sick son three days before committing suicide.

"She had also requested my husband to pay her salary arrears but he did not pay," the housewife said.

A grocery shop worker, who appeared before the court as witness, said the maid used to come to his store with bruises on her face and wearing worn out clothes.

The worker also told the court that the maid had told him the story of another maid who had worked for the same housewife, who shaved her head completely as a punishment.

A Saudi woman witness told the court that she had seen wounds and burns on the body of the maid when the latter had worked for her temporarily.

"She had requested me to keep her with me" after accusing her original employer of spraying boiled oil and detergents on her face and eyes, the Saudi witness told the court.

More than 19,000 domestic helpers fled their employers in Saudi Arabia in the past 12 months to March 2001 over a variety of disputes including maltreatment, according to Saudi officials. The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs house the runaway maids in shelters run by it until their cases are resolved.

Maids desert their sponsors for non-payment of salaries, maltreatment and abuse by family members, unwillingness to continue at work and psychological difficulties.

A majority of the runaway maids are from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Philippines.

Of the seven million foreigners in the Kingdom, more than one million work as domestic helps. Some 400,000 of them are housemaids.