Riyadh: A Saudi woman was sentenced to death on Sunday for beating her Bangladeshi maid to death.
The accused identified as Ayesha Al-Jizani has been sentenced to death by the Saudi court for mercilessly beating her 40-yr-old Bangladeshi maid Abiron Begum to death in March 2019.
According to a senior official at Bangladesh’s expatriate ministry Ahmed Munirus Saleheen, Jizani’s husband was jailed for three years for failing to help Begum access medical treatment and making her work outside the family home illegally. He added that Jizani’s son was sent to a juvenile facility for seven months.
The Saudi Criminal Court announced the judgement on Sunday. The judgement has received praise from the Bangladeshi foreign minister AK Abdul Momen. “I praise the Saudi government for giving out this rare yet exemplary punishment,” he said.
Now the relatives of Begum have urged the Bangladeshi government to take action against the brokers who “tricked” Begum into taking up this job four years ago.
The family members of Begum said, “They started torturing her two weeks after she left. She would call us and cry … we begged the brokers here to bring her back, but no one listened to us.”
Her sister Reshma told that Begum once said on a phone call, “They beat me up mercilessly and shove my head against [hot iron] grill. Please save me.”
More than 300,000 Bangladeshi female workers have travelled to Saudi Arabia since 1991 but many of them returned with stories of abuse and exploitation.
According to Human Rights Watch, (HRW) employers confiscate passports, withhold wages and force migrants to work against their will.
Workers who leave their employer without their consent can be charged with “absconding” and face imprisonment and deportation, HRW said. In the last five years, approximately 70 Bangladeshi workers died in Saudi Arabia, more than 50 of them died by suicide