A housemaid found guilty of decapitating her employers' four-year-old daughter has been sentenced to death.
The woman, whose name has not been released, was found guilty of murdering Tala Al-Shehri last September by a Saudi court.
The Indonesian housemaid was also given an eight-month jail term and 200 lashes for attempted suicide.
She was charged with killing the young girl with a meat cleaver when her parents at work and her sisters were at school, the English-language Saudi Gazette reported.
When the girl’s mother - a teacher - returned home, the maid was reported to have refused to open the door and barricaded herself in the bedroom.
The police arrived and smashed open the door - the housemaid is thought to have tried to commit suicide by drinking a bottle of bleach and she was found at Tala's side.
Tala’s father Khalid Al-Shehri said he and his family would never forget when they saw their daughter's mutilated body.
'When my wife called and told me she couldn’t open the apartment door (the maid and the daughter were inside and the teacher mother had just arrived from work) as it was locked from the inside, I thought something was wrong but never expected that she killed my daughter,' he explained.
Mr Al-Shehri suffered serious injuries in a road accident while rushed back home after his wife phoned him about the maid’s attack on their daughter, reported Emirates 247.
He only found out that Tala had been killed when he awoke in the hospital, according to the newspaper.
Mr Al-Shehri denied accusations the family had mistreated the maid and said he had not noticed any problems with the maid during her years of service with the family.
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Ibrahim Al-Mihayani of the Human Rights Commission said a team from the rights watchdog visited the maid in prison
'The team found that the woman seemed unperturbed by her heinous action, and she tried to win the visitors’ sympathy,' Al-Mihayani said, reported the Saudi Gazette.
'She said she does not have any remorse for what she did. Her reason for committing the crime was she received messages from Tala’s sisters saying the family was to send her home at a time she wanted to stay on,' he said.
The housemaid’s lawyer, appointed by the Indonesian mission in Riyadh, said he would appeal the verdict.
The maid could be saved from death in return for blood money, but Tala’s father has already made clear he would never forgive the maid or pardon her.
The convicted woman is not the first housemaid to be on death row in Saudi Arabia - local media reported in April last year that 25 Indonesian maids are on death row in Saudi Arabia and according to AFP 22 others have been pardoned and sent home.
Ruyati binti Sapubi, 54, an Indonesian maid was beheaded after she was convicted of killing her Saudi employer in June, 2011
Source: UKDaily Mail