Saudi life laid bare

Here's another installment in my irregular series of peeks at life inside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

In the city of Jizan, a maid was tortured and killed by her master and mistress for 'being lazy'.

A woman schoolteacher, one of the suspects in the murder of an Asian housemaid in March, has admitted to her torturing the maid until she was dead.

The Saudi sponsor of the maid who took her to hospital and the sponsor’s schoolteacher wife were both arrested in Jizan in March following a hospital report about the death of the maid, whose nationality has not been revealed to the press. [A Philippine migrant worker, most likely. --ed.]

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The teacher told the investigators that she and her husband used to punish the maid in various forms such as beating, branding and locking up while denying her food and water for days on end.

The teacher said they resorted to crude methods of punishment because the maid was lazy and negligent in her work. The teacher said they had every right to make the maid work because they had spent a lot of money to bring her from her native country.

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The coroner who examined the body had found serious wounds and burns.

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The relatives of the suspects have been in touch with the embassy officials and the relatives of the deceased to settle the matter with the payment of blood money.

Under Sharia law, the family of a murder victim can be bought off with blood money, which effectively closes the matter.