MUSCAT, 18 July 2004 — Oman’s criminal court yesterday sentenced an American woman to death for murdering her husband and, in a separate case, a German woman to 25 years in prison for killing her father.

Rebecca Thompson, a 43-year-old American, was found guilty of killing oil worker husband Mark Lee Thompson in December and sentenced to death, a Western diplomat said after the ruling was announced.

Her 14-year-old son by a previous marriage, William Derek Green, was handed three years in prison, the diplomat said, adding that his sentence had been reduced but without saying by how much.

The husband was battered to death on Dec. 30 last year and his body partly burned.

During the trial, which concluded April 21, Rebecca Thompson claimed she was provoked into hitting and killing her husband with an iron bar.

Defense lawyers invoked provisions of the law related to provocation, which could have resulted in the sentence on Thompson being reduce to one year, a legal source said during the trial.

Meanwhile, German physiotherapist Dana Gerlish was sentenced to life in prison for killing her father, in a verdict that also saw her alleged Omani lover and their three Omani accomplices receive the same jail term, a court source said.

Gert Manfred Gerlish, a 53-year-old car mechanic, was shot in the head at point-blank range in Muscat’s upmarket Qurum district in early December.

A diplomat said the three other Omanis included “the one who supplied the weapon, another who pulled the trigger and one who had mediated to organize the negotiations and money involved.”

Gerlish will be deported after serving her sentence, according to the ruling.

The prosecution had alleged that Gerlish, who pleaded not guilty to premeditated murder, decided to have her father killed because he opposed the relationship with her alleged lover, whose name has not been divulged in the Omani media.

All of yesterday’s sentences can be appealed.

In both cases, the court reached its verdicts on May 8, but they were kept secret and referred to the Grand Mufti, Sheikh Ahmed ibn Muhammed Al-Khalili, who had the final word on the fate of all those accused.

The mufti had 60 days to look into the cases and give his opinion before the verdicts could be publicized.

The mufti, who is authorized either to uphold a sentence or reduce it, reviews such cases along with the sultanate’s top two legal and criminal affairs advisers.