Nothing like the way our "moderate" allies in Saudi Arabia issue justice. Apparently these two freaks had problems in the bedroom. Instead of getting the little blue pill like normal people, they blamed their problem on witchcraft supposedly performed by an illiterate woman named Fawza Falih (one guy even said that Fawza brought back his ex wife).Fawza was beaten until she signed a written confession that she could not read or understand--now she is awaiting execution.
International fury over Saudi Arabia's plans to behead woman accused of being a witch
The Saudi Arabian king today faced international outcry over the planned beheading of a woman accused of being a witch.
Fawza Falih turned two men impotent, a court heard in the ultra-religious state where “performing supernatural occurrences” is considered an offence against Islam.
Judges were also told she cast a spell to bring about the return of a divorced man's ex-wife.
But international charity Human Rights Watch said King Abdullah's religious police had forced a confession out of her.
And they claim the judges who tried her in the northern town of Quraiyat never gave her the opportunity to prove her innocence in the face of "absurd charges that have no basis in law."
The court also relied on the statements of witnesses who said she had "bewitched" them to convict her in April 2006, according to HRW.
Fawza later retracted her confession in court, claiming it was extracted under duress, and said that as an illiterate woman, she did not understand the document she was forced to fingerprint.
An appeals court ruled in September 2006 that Fawza could not be sentenced to death for witchcraft as a crime against God, because she had retracted her confession.
After that, the lower court judges re-sentenced her to death on the court's "discretionary" basis, for the benefit of "public interest" and to "protect the creed, souls and property of this country."
HRW's Joe Stork said: “The fact that Saudi judges still conduct trials for unprovable crimes like 'witchcraft' underscores their inability to carry out objective criminal investigations.
"Fawza Falih's case is an example of how the authorities failed to comply even with existing safeguards in the Saudi justice system.
"The judges' behavior in Fawza Falih's trial shows they were interested in anything but a quest for the truth," Mr Stork added.
"They completely disregarded legal guarantees that would have demonstrated how ill-founded this whole case was."
The statement did not mention Fawza's nationality but said she has relatives in Jordan. Also, Falih's age is unknown.
The case is one of several that have triggered criticism of the Saudi legal system, which does not have a written penal code that spells out the elements of a particular crime.
The Law of Criminal Procedure issued in 2002 grants defendants the right to be tried in person, to have a lawyer present during interrogation and trial and to cross-examine any prosecution witnesses.
But in practice, lawyers are often banned from courtrooms, rules of evidence are shaky and sentences often depend on the whim of judges.
The most frequent - and recently, most high-profile - victims of such whimsical rulings are women, who already suffer severe restrictions in their daily life in Saudi Arabia.
Women there cannot drive, appear before a judge without a male representative or travel abroad without a male guardian's permission.
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