Saudi Rape Victim to Fight Unjust Punishment

A teenage Saudi gang-rape victim who has been sentenced to six months in prison and two hundred lashes has decided to fight the verdict. The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s holiest sites, applies a rigorous doctrine of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism. It imposes strict segregation of the sexes and a host of restrictions on women, who may not mix with men other than relatives and must cover from head to toe in public.
The 19-year-old’s identity has not been revealed but she has become known as "Qatif girl," after the Shi’ite-populated area of Al-Qatif in the Eastern Province she hails from.
After the rape in October 2006, she was sentenced to 90 lashes for having been in a car with a man who is not a relative.
The Higher Judicial Council granted a retrial, but, on November 14, a court toughened her sentence to six months in jail and 200 lashes.
The judges decided to punish the woman further for "her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media," a court source told the English-language daily Arab News.
The court also revoked the licence of Lahem, a leading human rights activist. He has also been summoned by the justice ministry to appear before a disciplinary panel next month.
In the court’s view, the girl, who was 18 at the time of the incident, was guilty because she was in the company of a male stranger who apparently had pictures of her she wanted to take back.