JEDDAH, 13 July 2005 — The police yesterday refused to release Nour Miyati under her Indonesian Embassy’s guarantee. As a result, she spent another night in jail just as her condition was beginning to improve psychologically.
Nour Miyati, the Indonesian maid who was brought to a Riyadh hospital in March with severe injuries resulting in the amputation of some of her limbs, was put in the women’s public jail Monday evening. She was still at the hospital receiving treatment for the injuries she suffered at the hands of her sponsor and his wife.
She accused her sponsor of tying her up in a bathroom for a month and beating her severely injuring her eyes and knocking some of her teeth out, but an investigative report stated that Miyati retracted her accusations that her sponsor tied her up and tortured her. Therefore she was charged with making false allegations against her sponsor while her sponsor and his wife were charged with assault and mistreatment and were released from jail on bail and are awaiting trial.
Indonesian Labor Attache M. Sukiarto and the lawyer the embassy has hired for her, Nasser Al-Dandani, tried yesterday to obtain her release from jail but the police refused.
“I sent a letter to the head of investigation asking to release her but they refused even with embassy guarantee,” said Sukiarto. “I still don’t know why they took her to jail considering her condition. I’m writing another letter to the foreign affairs office to intervene,” he said.
His letter points out that the embassy was not informed beforehand about the arrest, that the police did not accept the embassy as a sponsor to bail her and that with her amputated fingers and toes she cannot serve herself or move; at the hospital she was assigned a helper to assist her.
He said when he visited her two weeks ago she seemed to be getting better at least psychologically. The embassy had asked for a reinvestigation because they did not accept that Miyati changed her statements without being pressured — especially as the embassy, her lawyer and members of the National Society for Human Rights were denied access to her during the investigation.
Al-Dandani refused to comment on the arrest and the trial but said they are trying to get her out of jail through official channels. Meanwhile, no one has been able to see her in jail because access is difficult to a women’s jail.
