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 Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah pardoned LBC journalist Rozanna Al Yami yesterday, sparing her from her sentence of 60 lashes handed down by a Jeddah judge at the start of the week
for her part in the Saudi "sex bragger" case.
Significantly, he also diverted the case of another LBC employee to a committee of the Ministry of Information – presumably the Disputes Committee for Publications, which Suliman Al Jumaie, lawyer for the “sex bragger” himself, Mazen Abdul Jawad, referenced following the original court decision.
A Reuters report
quoted Al Yami as saying: “The king has vindicated me. I am satisfied with the king’s order and I accept the decisions of the sovereign.”
Following news of the lashing sentence against Al Yami, which the judge handed down as a “deterrence” even though he had dropped the formal charges, the world’s media erupted in an understandable bout of outrage at the harsh punishment.
But while the king’s decision to quash Al Yami’s sentence represents a good publicity move (as well as an act of human decency, rather more fundamentally), his assertion of the information ministry committee’s authority could have more lasting significance.
Al Jumaie’s complaint, following Al Yami’s sentence as well as his clients’ five-year, 1000-lash punishment, was that the court in Jeddah trying the cases was not the appropriate judicial vehicle for the situation.
“They are being tried by a court that is not specialised in this issue and has not even summoned LBC or watched the raw film,” said Al Jumaie in a statement, quoted by the Associated Press.
In the same statement he also criticised the decision not to move Abdul Jawad’s case to the same committee, a move which seems to have been ruled out by the Ministry of Information and the king’s advsiors.
“You cannot separate the cases. This is one TV programme,” AFP quoted Al Jumaie as saying.
While, from the point of view of getting the best result for his client, Al Jumaie’s position is understandable, to us there is a reasonably clear separation between the subject of a film – who admits, on camera, acts which are illegal in Saudi Arabia – and the makers of the film.
(Compare convictions elsewhere in the world for criminals caught by sting-style documentary film-makers, mostly secured on the basis of the filmed evidence. Of course, this assumes the film is a reasonable and accurate portrayal of the subject’s actions – something which Abdul Jawad and his laywer dispute.)
By moving the cases against LBC’s staff under the Ministry of Information, it seems to us that King Abdullah has sent a clear signal about how media cases such as this should be dealt with – namely, not by the general courts system, but by more specialised bodies.
Having commuted the sentence of the first LBC journalist to be tried, it seems highly likely that the second – a reporter named Iman Rajab, according to APF, and who may be pregnant, according to AP – will receive equally lenient treatment.
In the bigger picture, the king’s decision marks at least a partial victory for LBC owner Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal – although the Ministry of Information’s review of the case against LBC itself is still ongoing.
We suspect that there may yet be serious consequences for LBC, which, frankly would be deserved, given the broadcaster’s abysmal lapse in judgment in airing the “sex bragger” segment in the way it did.
But any concessions by the king to Prince Alwaleed, and what parts of Saudi society see as his appallingly liberal and depraved media empire, may come at the cost of angering the powerful religious establishment in Saudi Arabia, which forms a vital prop to the ruling family.
In the long term, LBC’s Bold Red Line may have done Prince Alwaleed and his efforts to liberalise Saudi media no favours at all.
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