SAUDI ARABIA: SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS DEATH PENALTY FOR ‘DAMMAM KIDNAPPER’

May 26, 2021:

Saudi Arabia’s Supreme Court on 24 May 2021 upheld the verdict issued by a criminal court in Dammam in September 2020, awarding the death penalty to a Saudi woman known in the media as the “Dammam kidnapper,” and jail terms for three other defendants, local media reported.
The woman, the main defendant, was convicted of kidnapping newborns from Dammam three decades ago, illegal adoption, forgery and establishing an illegal relationship. The court also sentenced the second defendant to one and a half years in prison and a SR20,000 fine, while the third defendant, a Yemeni man, was jailed for 25-and-a-half years. The court also handed one-year imprisonment and imposed a SR5,000 fine on the fourth defendant.
The criminal court found the Saudi woman, who had kidnapped two baby boys from a Dammam hospital in the 1990s, guilty.
She illegally raised the abducted children as her own and reportedly told them they were born out of wedlock. Police investigations into the babies’ kidnapping failed to yield results until suspicions about the identity of the two boys, who are now in their twenties, rose after she tried to apply for their ID cards.
The mystery of the missing of the two babies was unravelled two years ago, when the woman submitted applications to obtain identification documents for the two men.
Subsequently, the authorities conducted medical and technical examinations, and the results proved no biological relationship between the woman and the young men and instead proved their lineage to other Saudi families, who had reported the abduction of their children.
The Public Prosecution spokesman said that their investigation team carried out 247 procedures in the case, and these included 21 investigation sessions with 21 defendants and witnesses, and filed charges against defendants, including four convicts, while the fifth defendant is on the run outside the Kingdom.
The Public Prosecution sought the help of Interpol to bring back the culprit.