INDONESIA: TWO MIGRANT WORKERS DODGE DEATH ROW IN SAUDI ARABIA

January 14, 2012: Two Indonesian women working in Saudi Arabia have been granted reprieves from death sentences and  will return home soon, Humphrey  spokesman for the government migrant worker protection task force, said.
In an e-mail made available to Antara, Humphrey named the two women as Mesi binti Dama Idon, who was found guilty of practicing witchcraft, and Neneng Sunengsih, who was convicted of murdering her employers’ 4-month-old baby.
“Both will be flown to Indonesia very soon. We’ll be probably flying back on [January 19],” said Humphrey.
Mesi had already been sentenced by a local court but the Indonesian Consulate General’s legal affairs department filed an appeal to reduce the sentence. In July 2011, an appeals court reduced her sentence to 10 years imprisonment. It was then annulled by Saudi Arabia’s leader King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, who ordered the court to clear Mesi of all charges.
Meanwhile Neneng, from Sukabumi, West Java, was tried on Nov. 12, 2011. She was originally found guilty but later acquitted and freed.
The Indonesian Consulate hired a local lawyer, Naseer Al Dandani, to represent Neneng.
The lawyer convinced the prosecutors and judges that there was not enough evidence to charge Neneng as her fingerprints were not found on some items collected at the scene of the crime.
The fact that the baby’s parents declined to sign a permit to perform a post-mortem examination on the baby also hindered the local investigators in finding a cause of death. (Sources: Jakarta Globe, 15/01/2012)