The Indonesian government has sent a formal appeal to Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah to pardon a maid on death row for murdering her Saudi employer.
“Family members of the employer have already accepted SR7 million in blood money,” said Dede Achmad Rifai, a spokesman of the Indonesian Embassy, Saturday.
Thanking Saudi officials for their intervention and massive support to resolve the case of maid Satinah Binti Jumadi Ahmad, 41, Rifai said: “The employer’s family has already pardoned the maid, thus settling the private claims.”
The blood money was paid by the Indonesian government to stop the maid’s execution. Rifai, however, could not say when Satinah will be released.
Senior Indonesian officials, contacted by Arab News, are still tight-lipped on the case because of its “sensitivity.”
Satinah has been on death row since 2011 when she was found guilty of killing her employer’s wife and stealing SR37, 970 in 2007.
Satinah from Semarang in Central Java, Indonesia, was found guilty of killing 70-year-old Nura Al-Gharib in the Qassim area in early 2009.
“Now, Satinah can be spared the death penalty because we have transferred the blood money to the victim’s family,” said Gatot Abdullah Mansyur, former Indonesian ambassador to Saudi Arabia, who currently heads the Jakarta-based National Agency for Placement and Protection of Indonesian Workers Overseas.
The case of Satinah has been largely publicized in the Indonesian media. This is the highest amount of blood money paid by the Indonesian government in a death-row case in Saudi Arabia. Indonesia earlier paid SR2 million for another aid named Darsem, who was on death row in Saudi Arabia in 2011.
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