Democratic candidates blast Saudi rape sentence Wed Nov 21, 4:05 PM ET
Democratic 2008 hopefuls Wednesday expressed outrage at the sentencing of a Saudi rape victim to 200 lashes and six months in jail and criticized the White House response to the incident.
"This is an outrage," front-runner Hillary Clinton said in a statement, condemning the Bush administration for declining to call for a reversal of the sentence, on the grounds that it was an internal matter for its Saudi ally.
"I urge President Bush to call on King Abdullah to cancel the ruling and drop all charges against this woman. As president I will once again make human rights an American priority around the world," Clinton said.
On Tuesday, the State Department voiced "astonishment" at the sentence, but stopped short of calling for it to be changed.
Asked if the US government was reluctant to condemn an important Arab ally ahead of a conference aimed at reviving Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said: "No, that's not it at all.
"These kinds of decisions are going to have to be decisions that the people of that country -- in this case, Saudi Arabia -- are going to have to take for themselves," he said.
Clinton's top rival Barack Obama had raised the issue in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday.
"That the victim was sentenced at all is unjust, but that the court doubled the sentence because of efforts to call attention to the ruling is beyond unjust," Obama wrote.
"I strongly urge the Department of State to condemn this ruling.
Another 2008 Democratic presidential candidate Senator Joseph Biden, co-author of a bill mandating an international strategy against gender-based violence, also condemned the sentence.
"I'm outraged by the decision of a Saudi Arabian court to punish the victim of a brutal gang-rape," Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee said in a statement.
"I call on King Abdullah to exercise his powers and overturn this sentence if the Saudi courts do not reverse their decision immediately.
"I also would urge him to undertake reforms to prevent similar miscarriages of justice in the future."
Former vice presidential nominee and 2008 candidate John Edwards branded the sentence an "appalling breach of the most fundamental human rights."
"I am outraged that President Bush has refused to condemn the sentence," Edwards said in a statement.
"We need a president who will reengage with the world and restore our moral authority --- only then will we be able to lead other nations in protecting the basic rights and human dignity of every person on this planet."
The rape victim was initially ordered to undergo 90 lashes for "being in the car of an unrelated male at the time of the rape," the Arab News reported.
The tougher sentence was handed down after an appeal.
Saudi Arabia enforces a strict form of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism and forbids unrelated men and women from associating with each other, bans women from driving and requires them to cover head-to-toe in public.
The woman's assailants, six Saudi men, were initially sentenced to between one and five years in jail for the rape. Their sentences were stiffened to between two and nine years in prison, but they escaped the death penalty. |
