MUSCAT, 9 May 2004 — An Omani court yesterday referred its verdicts in two separate murder cases involving German and American women to the grand mufti, who has the final word on their fate and which could involve a death sentence.
The criminal court reached a verdict against Dana Gerlish, a physiotherapist, and her wheelchair-bound Omani alleged lover, both in their 30s, who were accused of murdering her father, a court source said after the brief session.
The verdict will only be made public on July 17, said the source.
Grand Mufti Sheikh Ahmed ibn Mohammed Al-Khalili has 60 days to “look into the case and give his opinion,” before it can be publicized, the source said.
The mufti is authorized either to uphold the sentence or reduce it. He reviews such cases along with the sultanate’s top two legal and criminal affairs advisers.
Referring a verdict to the grand mufti “is a normal procedure in cases where the death penalty is involved,” the source said. “You can only deduce that it’s the death penalty.”
Minutes after the verdict was reached in the German’s trial, the court made another confidential ruling in the case of an American accused of killing her husband.
The verdict against Rebecca Thompson, 43, will also be made public on July 17, the source said.
Thompson’s son by a previous marriage, William Derek Green, 14, and two 17-year-old Omani boys, were also charged in connection with the case. All three pleaded not guilty.
Diplomats raised concern that the two verdicts were issued so closely together after court sessions which they said had been conducted virtually on the same dates and one after the other.
Three Omanis who were alleged accomplices in the trial of the German woman and her alleged lover, which opened on March 13, also faced murder charges.
The verdict in that trial was decided in a packed court room in the presence of all five defendants, officials and numerous lawyers, the source said.
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 Omani media.
Gert Manfred Gerlish, 53, a car mechanic, was shot in the head at point blank range in Muscat’s upmarket Qurum district in early December.
Oil worker Mark Lee Thompson was battered to death on Dec. 30 last year and his body partly burned.
During the trial, which concluded on April 21, Thompson’s wife claimed she was provoked into hitting and killing her husband with an iron bar.
Defense lawyers “invoked provisions of the penal code related to provocation” which would reduce sentence on the woman to one year, a legal source said at the time.
In December, Americans in Oman were warned to be particularly vigilant following the two killings.
