COLOMBO: Sri Lanka said on Friday it was calling on Saudi Arabia to pardon a domestic worker sentenced to death by stoning after she admitted committing adultery while working in the Arab nation.
An official from Sri Lanka’s Foreign Employment Bureau said the married 45-year-old woman who was working as a maid in Riyadh since 2013 was convicted of adultery by a Saudi court in August.
Her partner, also a Sri Lankan migrant worker, was given a lesser punishment of 100 lashes on account of being single.
“She has accepted the crime four times in the courts,” Upul Deshapriya, spokesman for the Foreign Employment Bureau, said.
“But the Foreign Employment Bureau has hired lawyers and have appealed against the case. The appeal is ongoing.
“Also from the foreign ministry side, they are in negotiation with the Saudi government on a diplomatic level.”
Saudi Embassy officials in Colombo did not respond to requests for comment on whether they would consider the clemency plea.
Oil-producing Saudi Arabia follows Sharia, a highly conservative interpretation if Islamic law, and faces criticism by rights groups for the wide range of crimes such as adultery, drug smuggling and witchcraft which carry the death penalty.
Stoning, where a group throws stones at a person buried waist or chest deep in the ground until they are dead, still happens in parts of the Muslim world.