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 Rozanna Al Yami, a journalist who worked on the Saudi “sex bragger” story for LBC, has been sentenced to 60 lashes by a Jeddah court for her part in the debacle.
Twenty-two-year-old Al Yami, who is a Saudi national, apparently started crying after the verdict came down, according to lawyer Suliman Al Jumaie, quoted in The National. Al Yami had already been barred from travelling outside Saudi Arabia for two years.
Both Arab News and The National report that Al Yami has accepted the verdict, thus giving up her right to appeal. The specific charges against her included assisting with the preparation of the segment and promoting the show on the internet.
“I am too frustrated and upset to appeal the sentence,” Al Yami, a part-time worker at LBC who claimed not to have been involved in the Bold Red Line programme, told the Associated Press.
The AP also reports her as saying the judge in the case had agreed to drop the charges, but still sentenced her to be lashed “as a deterrence”.
But beyond a brutal punishment – and with more of the same possibly to come tomorrow, as another LBC journalist is called to the court – is what Suliman Al Jumaie is trying to pitch as a dangerous precedent for dealing with the media.
Al Jumaie, a lawyer for Mazen Abdul Jawad – the “bragger” at the centre of the case – told Arab News: “It is unprecedented in the country that a journalist should be convicted by a court for doing something related to her job as a media person.
“The verdict also signals the marginalization or freezing of the Disputes Committee for Publications in the Ministry of Culture and Information. The verdict will gratify those people who have been striving to deactivate the committee and bring media persons to ordinary courts for prosecution,” he added.
The paper says he made his comments before heading to Riyadh to attend a Disputes Committee meeting to discuss action against LBC itself.
Abdul Jawad himself had earlier been sentenced to five years in prison and 1000 lashes. His friends, who were also implicated in the scandal, received two years and 300 lashes each.
LBC is owned by Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, who had come under direct attack
even before the sex-bragger scandal for his supposed moral degradation.
We would be surprised if there wasn’t a large dose of politics behind this utterly horrific case.
However, simply from a common-sense standpoint, we still have to hold LBC itself accountable for the appallingly-poor judgement which resulted in an undisguised Saudi national discussed his sexual proclivities on air, without any apparent attempt to prevent or mitigate the inevitable fall-out.
UPDATE: 26 October
The prosecutor in the case has appealed against Al Yami's sentence – saying it's too lenient. He's apparently demanding a harsher penalty, according to Al Jumaie, who told Arab News
the prosecutor claimed 60 lashes was "not in sync with [Al Yami's] role as a coordinator and the one who prepared and advertised the programme".
We have no words to express our opinion of this. No words that are printable, anyway.
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