A three-member bench at the Dawadmi High Court, some 380 km from the capital, sentenced Rizana Nafeek on June 16, 2007, for killing her employers’ baby while they were away from home. She maintains that the newborn choked during feeding and that she tried to seek help.

During an appeal made on behalf of the accused, the judgment was upheld by the Supreme Court in Riyadh on Sept. 25 last year.

Sources from the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment told Arab News on Tuesday that the agent’s arrest has been confirmed by the country’s Criminal Investigations Department (CID) in Colombo.

"We handed over the case to the CID and its officials have done a great job in arresting this guy who was responsible for Rizana's misery in the Kingdom."

The sources also said that the arrested sub-agent is from Muttur, a village in the district of Trincomalee where Nafeek was born.

The sub-agents are paid an attractive sum by the recruiting agency in Colombo when they refer Muslim housemaids for employment in the Kingdom. Most Saudi sponsors prefer Muslim maids since they can accompany their families to the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah.

Rizana Nafeek arrived in Riyadh on May 4, 2005, to work as a housemaid for Naif Jiziyan Khalaf Al-Otaibi.

According to Nafeek’s passport, her date of birth is stated as Feb. 2, 1982, whilst a certified copy of her birth certificate indicates her actual date of birth as Feb. 4, 1988.

According to Nafeek's birth certificate, she was 17 when she came to the Kingdom and the murder occurred only three weeks following her arrival in Dawadmi.

Last month, Nafeek's mother Rifana made a request to the Colombo government to take legal action against the recruiting agency responsible for sending the maid even though she was under the legal employment age.

The mother said that the sub-agent had successfully convinced Nafeek's grandmother to make her travel to the Kingdom. The grandmother died following the handing out of the death sentence.

Before she left Sri Lanka, Nafeek was going to school in the village of Muttur. The young girl was sent to the Kingdom to provide money to help replace the family home’s thatched roof with a concrete substitute.

Nafeek's father is a woodcutter who earns his money from a nearby jungle.

In Sri Lanka, most recruiting agents in Colombo depend on sub-agents when recruiting housemaids. These sub-agents go from house to house in remote villages to identify their targets. The recruiting agent gives around 15,000 Sri Lankan rupees (SR512) for every housemaid brought to him by a sub-agent.