JEDDAH, 13 April 2007 — A 32-year-old woman known as the “Khamis girl,” who spent eight years in prison for murdering her ex-lover, has been pardoned by the victim’s family.
A relative of the woman, who asked not to be identified due to tribal sensitivities, told Arab News that the woman would soon be released. He said that the murdered man’s family had traveled from Khamis Mushait to Riyadh and relinquished their right to have the woman executed after Crown Prince Sultan convinced them to do so.
The news was confirmed yesterday following a tribal meeting between the two families. “We know the case had been solved verbally in Riyadh but yesterday was the ritual tribal announcement of the news,” said the source. Sheikh Hasan ibn Mushait, a tribal leader of the influential Shahran tribe, led the meeting.
At the meeting the murdered man’s family (the Gulais) said they would agree to pardon the woman only if her tribe agrees to 15 conditions. For the past three years, the victim’s family has rejected all offers to forgive the woman. They said that someone must have helped her and that it is impossible for her to kill a man, burn his body, cut him into pieces and then throw his remains into a dumpster alone.
An important condition was a call for a number of male relatives of the woman to swear on the Qur’an that they were not complicit in the crime. “The Gulais family asked two brothers and an uncle from the woman’s family (the Murait family), and her husband and a male relative of his from the Oud family to take the oath,” the source said. The murdered man’s family then announced that they had dropped their other conditions and had pardoned the woman.
“She is going to be set free on Saturday or Sunday as soon as the official paper work is done,” said the source. The Gulais family is expected to sign the official papers tomorrow. The family of the Khamis girl is also heading to the office of Asir Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal to thank him for Crown Prince Sultan’s intervention.
The woman has been on death row since being sentenced to death in June 2004. The execution had not been carried out as the two families held negotiations. The murdered man, with whom the Khamis girl had a relationship prior to marriage, did not want it to end and had threatened to publicize scandalous pictures of her. The girl told police that the man had demanded sex and that she had killed him while he attempted to rape her.
