A Saudi court sentenced a preacher convicted of raping his five-year-old daughter and torturing her to death to eight years in prison and 800 lashes, a lawyer said on Tuesday.
In a case that drew widespread public condemnation in the kingdom and abroad, the court on Monday also ordered Fayhan al-Ghamdi to pay his ex-wife, the girl’s mother, one million riyals ($270,000) in “blood money,” lawyer Turki al-Rasheed told the AFP.
Blood money is compensation for the next of kin under Islamic law.
The girl’s mother had demanded 10 million riyals ($2.7 million).
Ghamdi’s second wife, accused of taking part in the crime, was sentenced to 10 months in prison and 150 lashes, said Rasheed, who is a lawyer for the girl’s mother.
Ghamdi was convicted of “raping and killing his five-year-old daughter Lama,” he added.
The girl was admitted to hospital on December 25, 2011 with multiple injuries, including a crushed skull, broken ribs and left arm, extensive bruising and burns, activists said. She died several months later.
Ghamdi, a regular guest on Muslim television networks despite not being an authorised cleric in Saudi Arabia, had confessed to having used cables and a cane to inflict the injuries, human rights activists said earlier this year.
Randa al-Kaleeb, a social worker from the hospital where Lama was admitted, said the girl’s back was broken and that she had been raped “everywhere.”
Punch
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