SAUDI ARABIA SENTENCES DOCTOR TO 1500 LASHES

The medieval situation of daily living in Saudi Arabia for foreigners is graphically illuminated with a Saudi court sentencing an Egyptian medical doctor to 15 years in jail and 1500 lashes.

The "crime" apparently was driving alone with a woman passenger who was a member of the Saudi Royal Family. The coerced "confessed crime," however, was inducing the female patient to become a drug addict.

The BBC reports on its web site:

"Rauf Amin Mohammad al-Arabi, who had worked for the royal family for 20 years, was sentenced to 15 years in jail and 1,500 lashes.

He and Shawky Abd-Rabbu were convicted of prescribing morphine to a princess - who then became a drug addict."

I thought Saudi Arabia was a "friend" of the Bush/Cheney gang. Is this the conduct of "friends?"

The case of Rauf Amin Mohammad is a perfect example of no due process. It appears that Rauf Amin Mohammad had no access to any lawyers, had limited right to appeal, was forced to confess during the time he was hospitalized for surgery, was held for the last two years with limited rights to visits from his family.

And consider the penalty - 1500 lashes administered on a weekly basis of 50 lashes each. Who could survive the physical stress and pain? This really is a death sentence.

Reports the BBC:

"Seventy of the lashes were reportedly administered last week, with 70 next week.

"The doctors had denied the allegations, but were initially sentence to 750 lashes on charges of malpractice. They appealed but lost and the sentence was then doubled.

"Arabi's wife, Fathiya Shehata Hendawi, says the sentence will kill her husband. She has begged for leniency and is appealing to the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to save his life.

""It's impossible that he will be able to handle 1,500 lashes. Maybe after the ninth or 10th one he will be killed. God forbid.

"Who benefits from this? Not his kids, their father is a victim of something he did not do. He is a victim of complete injustice," she said.

"The Saudi royal family has refused to comment but a number of Egyptian newspapers blame their own government, which they say suffers an inferiority complex when it comes to dealing with the oil rich Saudis, says our correspondent."

The case of Rauf Amin Mohammad shows life in Saudi Arabia to be backward and draconian. The whole world needs to understand the primitiveness of Saudi society and its stunted legal code.

WHY NOTHING FROM GEORGE AND LAURA BUSH ON SAUDI TREATMENT OF 19-YEAR-OLD WOMAN GIVEN 200 LASHES?

Now we have the Saudi Foreign Minister in Annapolis for the meeting tomorrow. And still no apology or retraction of the unfair and barbaric sentence imposed upon that 19-year-old Saudi young woman caught in a car with a man not a relative. And this after the 19-year-old was gang-raped and sexually humiliated by seven males. A Saudi court convicted the girl and gave her a punishment of 200 lashes plus time in prison.

To see how the Saudi court treats this victim and makes her into the criminal is unjust. The penalty of 200 lashes is not only medieval and cruel, it is barbaric and backward. It violates the international Declaration of Human Rights and human rights of woman.

Here is a section from Declaration of the Rights of Woman, 1791, written by Olympe de Gouges way back in 1791:

"Man, are you capable of being just? It is a woman who poses the question; you will not deprive her of that right at least. Tell me, what gives you sovereign empire to oppress my sex? Your strength? Your talents? Observe the Creator in his wisdom; survey in all her grandeur that nature with whom you seem to want to be in harmony, and give me, if you dare, an example of this tyrannical empire. Go back to animals, consult the elements, study plants, finally glance at all the modifications of organic matter, and surrender to the evidence when I offer you the means; search, probe, and distinguish, if you can, the sexes in the administration of nature. Everywhere you will find them mingled; everywhere they cooperate in harmonious togetherness in this immortal masterpiece.

"Man alone has raised his exceptional circumstances to a principle. Bizarre, blind, bloated with science and degenerated--in a century of enlightenment and wisdom--into the crassest ignorance, he wants to command as a despot a sex which is in full possession of its intellectual faculties; he pretends to enjoy the Revolution and to claim his rights to equality in order to say nothing more about it."

This Declaration was written some 217 years before the Saudi court imposed this unfair sentence on this young woman this year for exercising her basic human rights.

Where is George Bush, great defender of freedom and democracy, in speaking out against this Saudi outrage? And where is Laura Bush, defender of the rights of women throughout the Moslem world? So far, we have heard nothing from either George or Laura. The government of the United States is silent on this most unjust violation of human rights. What hypocrisy!

SAUDI ARABIA DEFENDS 200 LASHES ON YOUNG WOMAN WHO WAS GANG-RAPED

Saudi officials have defended the decision of a Saudi court to impose 200 lashes on a 19-year-old woman who was gang-raped.

Reports Al Jazeera:

"Saudi Arabia has defended a court decision to sentence a woman who was gang-raped to 200 lashes, saying she was having an extramarital affair in violation of Islamic laws."The woman in the case is married and has confessed to establishing a relationship in violation of [Islamic] sharia law," the Saudi justice ministry said in a statement."

This punishment is barbaric and medieval. The young woman is the victim of a brutal sex crime, and the Saudis sentence her to 200 lashes for being in a car with a male not a relative.

Yet we have heard nothing from Bush or Rice condemning this injustice. And where is the voice of Laura Bush who is supposed to be the defender of women's rights around the world? All we get from Bush & Co. is silence.

We need to hear more protests from the Democratic presidential contenders. Clinton, Obama, Edwards and the rest have already protested this judicial barbarism emanating from the Saudi Kingdom. But they need to redouble their cries of outrage.

If Saudi Arabia allows this sentence or any punishment to be inflicted upon this 19-year-old, the world community should make Saudi Arabia an outcast and pariah.