Saudi Rape Victim Is 'Pardoned'

LONDON — King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia appeared to have bowed to international pressure yesterday when he pardoned a teenage girl who had been sentenced to six months in jail and 200 lashes after being suffering a horrific attack in which she was raped by a group of men.

There was no immediate official announcement of the king's decision to overturn the sentence against the 19-year-old girl, but a Saudi newspaper reported it.

It quoted the justice minister, Abdullah bin Mohammad bin Ibrahim al-Sheikh, as saying the king had the "right to overrule court judgments if he considered it benefiting the greater good."

The pardon comes on the first day of the annual Hajj pilgrimage, a duty for every Muslim at least once in his or her life. Among this year's pilgrims is President Ahmadinejad of Iran.

The Saudi girl, who was 18 at the time she was raped, was attacked at knifepoint by seven men after she was found in a car with a man who was not a relative, in breach of Saudi law.

The Justice Ministry had defended the woman's punishment, branding her an adulteress who "provoked the attack" because she was "indecently dressed."

Her identity has not been divulged, but she has become known as "Qatif girl," after the Shiite-populated area of Al-Qatif in the Eastern Province where she lives. The rapists were initially sentenced to between one and five years in jail, but those terms were also toughened in November to between two and nine years.

A rape conviction carries the death penalty in Saudi Arabia, but the court did not impose it due to the "lack of witnesses" and the "absence of confessions," despite a report by Human Rights Watch that said the judges ignored a mobile phone video taken by the men during the assault.