A female Saudi journalist said yesterday that a court has ordered her to receive 60 lashes for working at a television network that aired a man’s sexual confessions.
Rozana al-Yami said a judge in the Red Sea coastal town of Jeddah dropped all charges that she had been directly involved with the episode of a program on LBC, a Saudi-owned Lebanese network, in July.
However, Yami said the judge sentenced her to 60 lashes for having been a part-time employee for LBC’s Saudi operations. The judge mentioned LBC had lacked the appropriate operating license, she said without elaborating.
“It’s a punishment for all journalists through me,” Yami said by telephone.
“They just said the channel was illegal. But the Saudi minister of information himself appeared on LBC a couple of weeks ago,” she said.
Saudi judges base their rulings on strict Islamic Shariah law, but it was not immediately clear how the judge in this case reached the verdict.
Yami, 22, until recently a reporter for the Arabic women’s magazine Roaa, said she did not know when her sentence would be carried out. She does not plan an appeal, saying she feared she could end up with a harsher sentence.
Her sentencing comes after Saudi airline sales clerk Mazen Abdul Jawad was convicted of offensive behavior and sentenced to five years in jail and 1,000 lashes on Oct. 7 for his appearance on the LBC show Bold Red Line, in which he talked about picking up girls and having sex with them.
Three friends who appeared on the show with him were given two-year terms and 300 lashes each, while a cameraman who helped film the episode was sentenced to two months in jail.
Abdul Jawad’s lawyer Sulaiman al-Jimaie expressed shock at Yami’s sentence because she had nothing to do with him or the episode of the program he appeared in.
Jimaie said the court produced evidence that Yami had helped solicit people to appear on other episodes of Bold Red Line, a hit talk show for LBC hosted by TV star Malik Maktebi.
Jimaie was not in the court to hear the judge’s final ruling, but said the punishment was handed down simply because of Yami’s connection to the show, which features discussion about subjects often taboo in conservative Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia that are in LBC’s broad satellite footprint.
“For me it’s about the same program,” he said of her conviction.
“She made an announcement for this program, an e-mail to find others to take part. It’s an incredible decision,” he said, comparing it to the recent trials in Sudan of female journalists for wearing “indecent” trousers.
He called it an attack on journalism generally, and questioned why the case was heard in a criminal court rather than a special media tribunal linked to the information ministry.
“They made this decision because she is a journalist,” he said. “It will be difficult for any journalist to work in the future after this.”
The program has also drawn criticism from conservative Saudi clerics against LBC and its flamboyant, progressive owner, Saudi multi-billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.
Alwaleed has in recent years pushed hard against Saudi rules banning cinemas and music in public places through his Rotana and LBC media groups.
However, according to media reports on Saturday, LBC has decided to stop broadcasting Bold Red Line outside of Lebanon.
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
A team of doctors and vets in Pakistan has developed a novel treatment for a pair of elephants with tuberculosis (TB) that involves feeding them at least 400 pills a day. The jumbo effort at the Karachi Safari Park involves administering the tablets — the same as those used to treat TB in humans — hidden inside food ranging from apples and bananas, to Pakistani sweets. The amount of medication is adjusted to account for the weight of the 4,000kg elephants. However, it has taken Madhubala and Malika several weeks to settle into the treatment after spitting out the first few doses they
RSS