The Indonesian government has formally appealed to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah to pardon a maid on death row for murder after it paid SAR7 million ($1.87m) in blood money to the victim’s family.
Satinah Binti Jumadi Ahmad, 41, has been awaiting her death sentence since 2011 when she was found guilty of killing her employer’s 70-year-old wife and stealing SAR37,970 in 2007, Arab News reported.
“Family members of the [victim] have already accepted SAR7 million in blood money,” a spokesman for the Indonesian Embassy in Riyadh, Dede Achmad Rifai, was quoted as saying.
“The employer’s family has already pardoned the maid, thus settling the private claims.”
A former Indonesian ambassador to Saudi Arabia who is now head of the Jakarta-based National Agency for Placement and Protection of Indonesian Workers Overseas, Gatot Abdullah Mansyur, said Satinah should now be spared the death penalty.
Her case has been widely publicised in Indonesia.
It is not the first time the government has intervened in cases involving its nationals in Saudi Arabia, paying millions of riyals to save them from death.
In 2011, it reportedly paid SAR2m to free a maid named Darsem, who also was on death row.
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