“I met Nafeek in jail on Wednesday and spent more than an hour with her. She is hale and hearty,” Kifaya Ifthikar told Arab News on Monday, adding that Nafeek’s accommodation in prison is good.
Ifthikar said Nafeek still holds out hope that she will not be executed for the death of the infant. Nafeek claims the child choked during bottle feeding and that her original confession, which she retracted in 2007, had been acquired under duress.
According to a statement in Tamil from Nafeek acquired and translated by the Asian Tribune, Nafeek says she was physically abused with a belt at the police station demanding she provide a confession. Lawyers assert that Nafeek was sentenced to death without even a post-mortem report on the newborn.
The Sri Lankan government plans to send a special delegation to seek clemency for Nafeek.
According to a senior official at the Foreign Ministry in Colombo, the delegation would try to meet Naif Jiziyan Khalaf Al-Otaibi, father of the infant, to request he give up his private right to see Nafeek executed as an act of compassion or come to a blood-money settlement. The Saudi family insists Nafeek maliciously murdered the four-month-old infant.
At this point the only thing that can save Nafeek is clemency. “President Mahinda Rajapaksa has written to Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, seeking clemency for Rizana. Such is his own personal interest in this case,” said Sri Lankan Ambassador Ahmed A. Jawad.
However, under the Shariah the state cannot force the bereaved family to give up their rights. The government can offer reconciliation efforts and can pay blood money, but the family must be the one to decide if Nafeek is executed or pardoned.
Rishad Bathiudeen, Sri Lanka's minister of industry and commerce who visited the Kingdom recently, made a personal appeal to the Al-Otaibi family to release the maid on sympathetic grounds.
“I wish to express my thanks to Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and the government of Saudi Arabia for what they have done and are doing to amicably settle the matter,” said the ambassador.
