RIYADH, 2 April 2008 — A 40-year-old Saudi man brutally beat his 12-year-old daughter and then tied her to a wall leaving her to die inside their home in Al-Salam district of the capital in an incident that shocked locals and residents.

“We are talking about a man who not only beat his 12-year-old daughter in such a vicious way, but also tied one of her feet to the wall and her hand to the door, and left the house for shopping,” Riyadh police spokesperson Maj. Sami Al-Shuwairikh told Arab News. “After he returned home six hours later he found the girl dead and turned himself in.”

Police said the man confessed and that his case has been transferred to the General Investigation and Prosecution Board in preparation for trial. Al-Shuwairikh said if the man is deemed deranged, he would not be prosecuted but rather committed to a mental institution.

The girl’s body was taken by a Saudi Red Crescent ambulance to the King Saud Medical Complex where an autopsy was conducted. Investigators will also interrogate the Saudi man’s second wife, the girl’s stepmother.

“I was shocked,” said Yasser Al-Abdulkarim, a local television presenter, saying he suspects that the father is suffering from psychiatric problems.

Al-Abdulkarim added that the media plays an important role in such events by publicizing the punishment of such criminals so others think twice before committing such heinous acts.

Another local, Abdulrahman Al-Shehri, said the crime illustrated a social dysfunction.

“I do not know how this man will live with himself,” he said. “How could he actually do such a thing to his own flesh and blood? In the older generation of Saudis, we were told not to lay hands on a girl. She is reprimanded, scolded, but never beaten. Something has obviously changed in society.”

Several news stories have been published in the local media of domestic violence and deaths related to abusive husbands in the past several months. Many believe this indicates an alarming rise of domestic violence in Saudi Arabia. Others speculate that the problems have existed for a long time, but that the Saudi media has in recent years become more open to addressing an issue that was once taboo.

Last month, the death sentence was handed down to a man who was found guilty of beating his wife to death. A three-member panel of judges handed the death sentence to the Taif man. But the name of the condemned and the date the crime took place were not disclosed when the sentence was reported in the local press.

According to what is known about the case, the father of the woman went to the authorities with the accusation that his son-in-law murdered his wife and then attempted to conceal the crime. Medical examiners then determined that the woman died due to repeated blows to her neck. The father also said the man had a history of abusing the woman.

Earlier this year, Nashaat Ahmed Haji and his wife Iman Ghazzawi were publicly beheaded in Makkah for the murder of nine-year-old Ghosun, Ahmed Haji’s daughter from a previous marriage. Both the father and the stepmother were found complicit in the torture and eventual murder of the girl. The biological mother had repeatedly attempted to win back custody and went to authorities on numerous occasions before Ghosun’s death with allegations that her daughter was being abused.