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| Arabia | |
| Man tells of flogging - 250 lashes down, 50 to go | |
| 2003-03-05 | |
| Two hundred and fifty lashes down, 50 to go, was how Melbourne man Robert Thomas last night described his ordeal of imprisonment and flogging in a Saudi Arabian jail for a crime he says he did not commit. Mr Thomas has been caned on his back in batches of 50. The next caning could come at any time. Mr Thomas, 56, from Caulfield, told The Age he has not bled so far and has remained conscious during the beatings, which Prime Minister John Howard yesterday described as "appallingly inhumane." Mr Thomas, an anaesthetic technician and chief of department at the Prince Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz hospital in the Saudi city of Bishah, was last year sentenced to 16 months in jail and 300 lashes by a Saudi court. His wife Lorna, a head nurse at the hospital, was charged over the theft of hospital equipment and sentenced to 16 months and 300 lashes. According to Mr Thomas, who has been working in Saudi Arabia for about 10 years, and previously worked at the Alfred Hospital and Cotham Private Hospital in Kew, the Saudi judge had accepted his not guilty plea. "The judge said that he was sure I did not steal but I must have known (of the crime) as Lorna was my wife and (a) husband always knows what his wife is doing," Mr Thomas wrote in a letter to his daughter Sarah Munro...
...Before they took Mr Thomas to be beaten, she says prison staff and fellow inmates gave him a chance to lessen the pain by converting to Islam. He refused the offer. Prisoners and guards gathered to see the flogging. "Because he is a non-Muslim, he gets a huge crowd when he is being flogged because everybody wants to see a non-Muslim getting lashed." Lovely place... | |
| Posted by:Anonymous |
| #8 maybe 'lessen the pain' just meant he would feel spiritually cleansed or something if he converted for Allah |
| Posted by: anon 2003-03-06 04:15:46 |
| #7 a chance to lessen the pain by converting to Islam Like what, 200 lashes instead of the 300... |
| Posted by: RW 2003-03-06 00:42:26 |
| #6 I'd rather be beaten than to be like them, too... |
| Posted by: Fred 2003-03-05 22:05:41 |
| #5 What we have in Saudi Arabia is a society aware of it's own failures, so much so that the act of beating an Australian in public arises a sort of patriotism. When the Saudis beat my fellow Australian it's nothing more than an act of revenge against the west. I am impressed by Mr Thomas' refusal to convert to Islam, the Saudis' must have really hated that! |
| Posted by: Nick 2003-03-05 21:31:25 |
| #4 Let this be a lesson to whomever is thinking about going to SA. Do something that runs afoul of their laws, and you will regret it. Regardless of what anyone outside of SA thinks about their rules, it's still THEIR RULES, and if something happens while you are there that can be legally blamed on you, then that's how the ball bounces. Forget the idea of changing them. If they want to change, then it is up to them to do it. If they won't, then simply stay out of there. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2003-03-05 20:56:44 |
| #3 These people are NOT the moral equivalent of a fan of the Jerry Springer show. And it would be more accurate to say: 'their religion their laws' since it's based on Sharia People on Springer are there screwing up their lives of their own free will, there is no moral equivalence between people getting a thrill from watching consenting adults to people getting a supremacist thrill from watching those of an 'inferior' religion cop a public beating for a trivial and unproven matter. There is NO moral equivalence here. To say 'it is their culture' as a blanket for 'it's ok to be barbaric, brutal and unjust' is the easy way out of cultural relativism. It is an aspect of their culture that they should make efforts to change. |
| Posted by: anon 2003-03-05 16:47:40 |
| #2 "... a husband always knows what his wife is doing" NO COMMENT |
| Posted by: True German Ally 2003-03-05 15:47:36 |
| #1 their country, their laws. the government in canberra is trying to intercede on this guy's behalf, he seems to be dealing with it rather well from what this article portrays. as for lashing, there are plenty of westerners in saudi arabia, so this would not be something new for them, but the crowd yes, the crowd does like that kind of thing. Remember though, that these people are the equivalent of an american fan of the jerry springer show. -DS "the horns hold up the halo" |
| Posted by: DeviantSaint 2003-03-05 15:38:40 |