Lashes for ‘illict relations’ in Qatar
They’ve been busy in the courts in Qatar, with two items from the Gulf Times in consecutive days – the first from 2 October:
A Pakistani man and a Filipina have been sentenced to a 100 lashes and deportation following their conviction for illicit relations. They had a child in August 2008. Police were informed by the hospital after finding out that the 34-year-old woman was unmarried, and the father of the child was the 21-year-old man who took her there.
The man said he would meet the Filipina in her friend’s house.
The two told the court that they were ready to marry and presented documents.The court said that the marriage, if it happened, “does not erase a prior crime and does not make it legal”.
And then the following day:
A Doha court sentenced a 38-year-old Filipino to one year imprisonment for maintaining illicit relations with a compatriot housemaid in her sponsor’s house on March 27 this year.
Following her confessions of the charges, in the interrogations and in the court room, the 36 year old woman was sentenced to 100 lashes, subject to medical fitness, as she was an ‘unmarried Muslim.’
The Doha court of first instance also ordered the deportation of the accused after the implementation the punishment.
The man, a municipal driver, told the interrogators that he knew his lover a month before their arrests and that she invited him to her sponsor’s house and facilitated his entry there.
