ABDUL/ATTICUS:

Saudi Lawyer Takes On Religious Court System: Rights Cases Used To Press for Change (Faiza Saleh Ambah, 12/23/06, Washington Post)

The police assumed that the women had been visiting male friends. But the two had been at the home of female relatives. And unlike the thousands who had previously been intimidated into dropping their grievances, they insisted on taking their kidnappers to court. The case, which goes to trial next week, will give Lahem a chance to finally confront the powerful morals police, whom he considers the country's worst human rights offenders.

Lahem, a 35-year-old father of two, contends that the police oppress people in the name of religion and act as if the law doesn't apply to them. He wants to prove them wrong.

"If we win this case, it will have more of an impact than a dozen lectures or newspaper articles," he said. "It will send a powerful message to them, and to the public, who view men of the cloth as untouchable. It will prove that nobody is above the rule of law."

Over the past three years, Lahem has taken on the country's most controversial and sensitive cases and turned them into high-profile indictments of the justice system. He has been thrown in jail several times and banned from traveling abroad. But he continues to fight what he considers an antiquated judiciary, out of step with basic human rights.

Saudi Arabia's legal system is based primarily on the principles of sharia, laws derived from Islam's holy book, the Koran, and on the Sunna, examples from the life of its prophet, Muhammad. Saudi judges follow the official Wahhabi doctrine, the most puritanical and conservative interpretation of Islam, and have wide discretion in handing down sentences.

Lahem's latest client is a 19-year-old woman who was in a car with a male friend when she was kidnapped and gang-raped by seven men. In November, four of the men received prison sentences ranging from one to five years and 80 to 1,000 lashes, and three are awaiting sentencing.

The rape victim was sentenced to 90 lashes for having been with a male friend, which is illegal in this strictly segregated country.

Lahem, a slight, fragile-looking man, said he took the case because he was so incensed by that verdict.

"Instead of ordering post-traumatic treatment for her and making sure she's appointed a lawyer," he said, the judge "sentences this young girl, after what she's been through, to lashes." He shook his head.

"This could completely damage her," he said, fingering the handle of a gray cane he carries because of a pronounced limp caused by a fall when he was an infant. "This is not justice; this is jungle sharia."

Lahem's involvement in any case has come to mean trouble, or at least intense scrutiny, for judges across the kingdom.

Power Struggle In Saudi Arabia: A Sign Of Regional Instability (Peter Symonds, 23 December 2006, World Socialist Web)

The abrupt resignation of Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the US, Prince Turki al-Faisal, last week is one more sign of a power struggle underway in Riyadh. While factional intrigues in the Saudi royal family are undoubtedly involved, the overriding factor is the deepening instability throughout the Middle East being fuelled by the aggressive intervention of the US, above all in Iraq.

Destabilizing the region was the point of our going there. Why would Mr. Symonds oppose Mr. Lahem?

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 23, 2006 8:51 AM