President appeals for clemency for maid awaiting execution

Sri Lanka (AP):

Sri Lanka's president has appealed for clemency for a maid awaiting beheading in a Saudi Arabian prison, his office said yesterday.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa wrote to Saudi King Abdullah after a court confirmed the death sentence of Sri Lankan maid Rizana Nafeek in the death of an infant five years ago, a government statement said.

Nafeek was first sentenced to death in 2007, sparking protests by international human-rights groups that say she was a minor when the infant died and that she accidentally suffocated the baby while trying to bottle-feed him.

Nafeek appealed her sentence, and her parents travelled from a poor village in eastern Sri Lanka to Saudi Arabia to meet the baby's parents and ask for a pardon. But they were refused a meeting.

Rights group concerned

New York-based Human Rights Watch urged the Saudi government to stay the execution, saying the kingdom is one of only three countries known to have carried out death sentences against people for offences committed when they were minors.

The rights group said that a recruitment agency had altered Nafeek's passport to suggest she was 23 years old, so she could migrate for work, while her real age was 17.