7 months for murder????

I saw this in the newspaper the other day.

Death penalty reprieve
Web posted at: 1/11/2009 3:30:11
Source ::: The PENINSULA/ By Mohamed Saeed

DOHA: A lower criminal court which sentenced a housewife to face the firing squad for killing her maid walked away with a lighter sentence passed by the Court of Appeals, which ruled that the murder was not premeditated.

The woman, convicted of stabbing the maid in rage, has now been sentenced to three years in jail and her husband, who was found guilty of being a part to the crime and sentenced to three years in prison by the lower court, has been acquitted.

The Court of Appeals ruled that the husband was not responsible for the death of the maid who had received multiple stab wounds with a kitchen knife and succumbed to her injuries.

“The housewife walked away with a jail term as the higher court found that the murder was not premeditated”, defence lawyer Mohsin Theyab Al Suwaidi told this newspaper. The husband of the convict was acquitted as he did take part in the crime. The lower court had found the husband to be responsible for letting the maid be ill-treated by his wife and thus sentenced him to three years in jail.

The Mesaimeer police were informed two years ago that a maid had committed suicide in a house in the Old Airport area and that her body was lying in the bathroom. However, investigators who were suspicious of the injuries found on her body carried out extensive interrogation of the couple and their two small children. Their five-year-old son told investigators that his mother used to severely beat the maid. “She had hit her continuously with a plastic stick, a rope and even with a hot iron,” he said.

When the father was interrogated, he replied that the son was not lying. He said he knew about what was going on with the maid but could not protect her since that would have made his wife suspicious that he had an affair with the maid.

Medical reports confirmed that there were marks of injury, including those by a hot iron on the maid’s body. Photographs of the maid when she had freshly arrived here showed she was healthy and cheerful, but those taken after her death and produced in the court showed she had turned weak and fragile.

Forensic tests disclosed that she had not taken any food for days and had lost weight. Her corpse weighed only 39kg. According to Al Suwaidi, the Court of Appeals ruled that “Ill-treatment was the cause of the maid’s death.”

As the convict has been in judicial custody throughout the trial, she will now serve only seven months in prison.

THE PENINSULA

I just do hope they gave blood money....poor girl.