Saudi Arabia's Justice Ministry said a girl who it sentenced to jail time and flogging after being gang raped by seven men was an adulteress who invited the attack because at the time she was partially dressed in a parked car with her lover.The statement from the ministry, carried by the Saudi Press Agency late Saturday, defended the court's decision to sentence the girl to six months in prison and 200 lashes for violating the country's strict sex segregation laws. It also sought to ease international outrage over the case by discrediting the woman who had told reporters earlier that she was meeting a friend from high school when the attack occurred. "The Saudi justice minister expressed his regret about the media reports over the role of the women in this case which put out false information and wrongly defended her," the statement said. "The charged girl is a married woman who confessed to having an affair with the man she was caught with."
Known only as the "Girl from Qatif," the 19-year-old rape victim said she was a newlywed who was meeting a high school friend in his car to retrieve a picture of herself from him when the attack occurred in the eastern city of Qatif. While in a car with him, two men got into the vehicle and drove them to a secluded area where others waited, and then she and her companion were both raped.
The ministry's latest account of the incident alleges that the woman and her lover met in his car for a tryst "in a dark place where they stayed for a while. Then they were spotted by the other defendants as the woman was in an indecent condition as she had tossed away her clothes, then the assault occurred on her and the man."
It said the sentence of prison and lashes, handed down last week following an appeal, was legal and followed the "the book of God and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad," noting that she had "confessed to doing what God has forbidden." The woman and her husband were "convinced of the verdict and agreed to it," it said.