Woman arrested for "witchcraft" in Saudi Arabia

http://news.yahoo.com/sri-lankan-hel...152522425.html

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JEDDAH (Reuters) - A Sri Lankan woman has been arrested on suspicion of casting a spell on a 13-year-old girl during a Saudi family's shopping trip, a police spokesman said on Wednesday, and may face death in a country where convicted sorcerers are beheaded.

The spokesman, Mesfir al-Juayed, confirmed to Reuters by phone that details of the woman's arrest published in local media were correct.

The daily Okaz reported that a Saudi man had complained his daughter had "suddenly started acting in an abnormal way, and that happened after she came close to the Sri Lankan woman" in a large shopping mall in the port city of Jeddah.

"He reported her to the security forces, asking for her arrest and the specialized units dealt with the situation swiftly… and succeeded in arresting her," Okaz reported on Wednesday.

Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally, is an absolute monarchy that has no written criminal code and where court rulings are based on judges' interpretation of Islamic Sharia law.

"The punishment is always beheading for anyone found guilty of witchcraft," a Saudi lawyer and human rights activist, Waleed Abu al-Khair, told Reuters by phone.

In December, Amnesty International condemned the beheading of a woman in Saudi Arabia convicted on charges of "sorcery and witchcraft," saying it underlined the urgent need to end executions in the kingdom.

Amnesty said the execution was the second of its kind last year. A Sudanese national was beheaded in the Saudi city of Medina in September after being convicted on sorcery charges, according to the London-based group.

(Reporting by Asma Alsharif; Editing by Angus McDowall and Michael Roddy)

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I wonder if these guys think Harry Potter is based on real events.

And: inb4 "atheist propaganda".

This is so stupid. "Hey, my daughter acted weird after going to school, clearly the school must be a satanic place full of witches and evil"

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Originally Posted by Solarboy

This is so stupid. "Hey, my daughter acted weird after going to school, clearly the school must be a satanic place full of witches and evil"

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What's worse is that she isn't even from Saudi Arabia. Wouldn't want to go there as a tourist, at least if I were female.

My .02 as someone who has schooled in Ghana for the past 8 months...

Let me add that witchcraft isn't only present in Saudi Arabia. Here in Ghana, even the school social studies textbooks tell students that witches exist. The books tell students how to tell if someone is a witch, what their powers are, and if they suspect someone, they should report them to the authorities.

Accusations are far more prominent in the rural north. Reasons for accusation varies, but one common reason is if a woman is seen to be prospering/owning land. Other reasons could be denying a man marriage, or any strange events happening around her.

Witches here are sent to camps. One problem is that as much as some Ghanaians (and the Western world) would like to see the camps end, they actually help protect the women from the masses

Video from a witch camp I plan on visiting in June (to conduct interviews) is in the spoiler below.

Spoiler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAN-BbEMdYs

It's sad that we live in a world with people as moronic as this.