Whomever the next President is needs to start re-evaluating our relationship with Saudi Arabia--we know darned good and well that Bush won't in his remaining time in office, even in light of things like this:
Yep, just Saudi justice at work.But, hey, this is just another day in Saudi Arabia, where religious police trap teenage girls in burning school buildings for shedding the head-to-toe Islamic garments they must wear in the presence of men. Where it's a crime for adult women to drive, vote or hold office. And where polygamy is encouraged, and men in their 60s take 14-year-old brides.
Now this. The 19-year-old rape victim, a Shiite woman, originally received a sentence of 90 lashes from the Islamic court after she was kidnapped, beaten and repeatedly raped. Her crime? Being in the same car with an unrelated male companion.
She only agreed to meet the man after he threatened to tell her father they were having an affair if she didn't join him alone. She subsequently was abducted and raped by seven other men. Then her brother beat her for good measure because the rapes brought shame to the family.
Last week, the Supreme Judicial Council convicted her of unchaperoned car-sitting and hiked the sentence to 200 lashes and six months in prison.
After the West got wind of the barbarous ruling, the Saudi Ministry of Justice defended it by saying that "charges were proven" against the woman. So what's the problem?
And Dubya, for all his good work in Iraq, is cozying up to these folks.
|