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November 16, 2007
There was a dreadful story in Friday's New York Times about a 19-year-old Saudi girl who had a sentence upped to 200 lashes and six months in jail because her lawyer complained that her conviction was unjust and the punishments meted out to seven men who raped her were too lenient.
Her crime? Being in the same car with an unrelated man! He was actually her former boyfriend and was returning pictures to her because she was about to marry another man.
I hope the marriage is still on, but I doubt it. You see, her "crime" came to light when she and the former boyfriend were kidnapped by the seven men who raped them both. She and her former boyfriend was originally sentenced to 90 lashes each for meeting with each other.
Certainly the men who kidnapped and raped them were punished with a mix of lashings and prison terms. But to sentence a 19-year-old girl to lashings and a prison term because a court suspected she intended to do something bad is not just unjust to the Western mind - it's bonkers.
But this is a world where women can't travel without permission, drive, study such subjects as law and engineering, vote, work in many government offices and have to wear neck-to-ankle black robes and cover their hair with a black scarf.
But don't say a word. We don't want to rock the boat that has the biggest reserves of the lifeblood of the industrial world. The Saudis are our friends.
- Peter C. T. Elsworth
Posted by Peter C. T. Elsworth 
at 2:21 PM to Crude oil market
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