SAUDI ARABIA. MONEY SAVES PALESTINIAN TEENAGER FROM EXECUTION

July 7, 2005: it was reported that a Palestinian teenager on death row in Saudi Arabia on charges of killing her Saudi husband at the age of 13 would walk free within days after her in-laws accepted "blood money". The girl, now aged 18 and identified only by her first name of Marwa, had been accused of killing her 35-year-old husband two months after wedding him and spent the past five years in prison in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, according to the English-language Saudi Gazette. Contrary to earlier reports, Marwa was not accused of stabbing her husband with an ice pick, the paper said. His death occurred by strangling, but it was the result of a "tragic accident" which occurred when the husband woke up one morning and told Marwa he dreamed she had strangled him, the paper said, citing the girl's testimony. He asked her to reconstruct the dream with a scarf wrapped around his neck and himself pulled so hard as she pulled on the other end that the "joke" ended in tragedy, it said.
Marwa's in-laws had accepted to pardon her in exchange for "blood money" of three million riyals (800,000 dollars) and the construction of a mosque commemorating her late husband. The teenager's family, based in the Red Sea city of Jeddah, collected the amount from their savings, donations from relatives and friends "and considerable help from princes," the Saudi Gazette said. (Sources: Agence France Presse, 07/07/2005)