Saudi Arabia to flog 75-year-old woman for flouting sex segregation rules

RIYADH - Saudi Arabia is to flog a 75-year-old woman for breaching sex segregation rules, prompting human rights watchdog Amnesty International to appeal to the royal government in Riyadh to cancel a sentence of 40 lashes.

“The minister of interior (Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz) is reported to have ordered the immediate detention and flogging of a 75-year-old woman, Khamisa Mohammed Sawadi, along with two Saudi Arabian men known only as Fahad and Hadyan,” the London-based watchdog was quoted by The Telegraph, as saying.

“The Saudi Arabian authorities must not carry out the imminent flogging and imprisonment of an elderly woman and two younger men,” it added.

Amnesty said all avenues of appeal had now been exhausted in Saudi courts against the trio’s March conviction for being in the company of members of the opposite sex who are not close relatives.

“It is abhorrent that an elderly woman is at risk of 40 lashes,” said the deputy director of the watchdog’s Middle East and North Africa Programme, Philip Luther.

Sawadi and Fahad were sentenced to 40 lashes and four months’ imprisonment, and Hadyan to 60 lashes and six months’ imprisonment, Amnesty said. Sawadi also faces deportation to her native Syria on completion of her prison term.

Saudi Arabia enforces a strict version of Islamic sharia law and imposes corporal punishment for a wide variety of offences. (ANI)