RIYADH: The Appeals Court in Riyadh has rejected the three-year prison sentence given by the General Court in Madina in January to the Saudi woman convicted of physically abusing Indonesian housemaid Sumiati Mustapa, Al-Hayat Arabic daily has reported. The case, which received worldwide attention after Mustapa was admitted to hospital last year with broken bones and burns to her face and body, will now go back to the court in Madina for reinvestigation. Lawyer for the defendant Ahmad Al-Rashid told Al-Hayat that the court had “annulled the sentence in favor of the defendant due to observations concerning the verdict” which he described as the judge's “haste in issuing a verdict before investigating details and hearing public action before private”. He said that following the ruling from the Appeals Court the case will be “looked at again in the presence of the defendant, the plaintiff and attorney general” with “new hearings to be opened into the case”. Al-Rashid said that the attorney general was seeking a sentence of 15 years' prison for the convicted woman. The General Court in Madina had sentenced the accused after four hearings to three years in prison for human trafficking (public right), after she was found guilty of assaulting 23-year-old Mustapa. Michael Tene, spokesman for the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, described the sentence at the time as “very light given the violence Mustapa was subjected to”.
