RIYADH: The case of Rizana Nafeek, the Sri Lankan maid who was found guilty of the death of a Saudi infant in May 2005, will be heard again on Sunday at a court in Dawadmi, the Sri Lankan Embassy announced on Saturday.
In July, the court in Dawadmi where Nafeek was initially tried referred the case to the high court in Riyadh which referred the case to the court of origin for further clarifications.
The case has been moving between courts for over a year, having first been heard in Riyadh in March 2008.
In November the high court announced that a key witness to what happened on the day Nafeek allegedly made her confession — the Indian translator — had left the Kingdom and would be unavailable for testimony.
The court has issued a summons to the police investigating officer, to the local religious police and to Nafeek for Sunday’s hearing.
Khateb Al-Shammary, Nafeek’s lawyer, said that the three-member bench headed by Chief Justice Abdullah Al-Rosaimi would forward the results of its deliberations to the high court in Riyadh which would in turn decide the next course of action.
Nafeek is appealing a death sentence. The parents of the infant accuse her of murdering their child. On the other hand, she claims the infant choked while being bottle-fed. Nafeek was trafficked into the country to work as a housemaid on a passport that falsely stated her age as 23.
Her original birth certificate indicates she was 17 at the time; that age would have barred her from working in the Kingdom.
Her coming to Saudi Arabia not only violated the Kingdom’s own laws against underage labor, but it also constituted human trafficking on the part of the recruiter who sent her to the Kingdom.
An advocate for the accused from the Sri Lankan Embassy expressed concern that Nafeek had been in prison for more than four years while the system sought to dispense justice.
Nafeek was spared execution last year on the last day of the deadline for appeal when she was assigned a lawyer, retained with the help of the Asian Human Rights Commission and the Lankan community in Saudi Arabia.
Khateb Al-Shammary, the lawyer, cited several reasons why the maid should not be executed.
In addition to the issue of Nafeek’s age, the legal representative says she was assigned the duties of a nanny to take care of a newborn in addition to her duties as housekeeper.
The lawyer also says that since Nafeek had only been on the job for seven days, there was not enough time for her to harbor ill will that would cause her, as the parents of the dead baby allege, to murder the newborn out of anger and a desire for vengeance.
