A Saudi court on Tuesday more than doubled the number of lashes that a female rape victim was sentenced to last year after her lawyer appealed the original sentence. The decision, which many lawyers found shocking even by Saudi standards of justice, has provoked a rare public debate about women's rights.
The victim's lawyer, Abdulrahman al-Lahem, a well-known human rights activist, drew the court's ire because of his strong public criticism of the handling of the case.
He has called his client's conviction unjust and said the sentences of the seven men who raped her were too lenient.
Lahem is also known for his past defense of critics of the monarchy.
The victim's name has not been released. She was 19 years old at the time of the assault.
Her case has been widely debated since the court sentenced her to 90 lashes a year ago for being in the same car as an unrelated man, even after it ruled that she had subsequently been raped.
The young woman's offense was in meeting a former boyfriend, whom she had asked to return pictures he had of her because she was about to marry another man. The couple was sitting in a car when a group of seven men kidnapped them and raped them both, lawyers in the case told Arab News, a Saudi newspaper.
The woman and former boyfriend were sentenced to lashing for being together in private, while the attackers received sentences ranging from 10 months to five years in prison and 80 to 1,000 lashes each.
Lahem appealed the attackers' sentences, saying that they were too lenient and that the treatment of the victim was too harsh. In its new decision issued on Tuesday, the court increased the victim's sentence to 200 lashes and six months in jail.
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