Saudi Boy, 14, Faces Execution

A 14-year-old boy is facing execution in Saudi Arabia after being found guilty in a flawed trial of murdering a three-year-old girl, Human Rights Watch said yesterday. The girl, Wala abd al-Badi, was found dead with multiple stab wounds in a park in the eastern city of Dammam last year.

Saudi press reports said the boy, identified only as Ahmad al-D, told police during interrogation that he killed the girl because her father had hit him and he thought she had stolen his toys.

But Human Rights Watch said: "At every stage of the investigation, detention, trial and sentencing, the Saudi authorities violated Ahmad's due process rights as well as international legal protections for children. He had no legal assistance or representation during interrogation, detention and trial. Press and police accounts also throw into question his psychological stability and his ability to participate in his own defence."

The boy told an online newspaper he confessed to the murder only after police questioned him for a third time because "my strength dwindled and I lacked the capacity to refuse". He said he had been in solitary confinement for three months, awaiting trial.

Although he was 13 at the time of the murder, the court treated him as an adult, based on its assessment of the coarseness of his voice and his pubic hair.

Saudi Arabia has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits capital punishment for offences committed by young people under 18.

"Executing one child for the killing of another would only compound the tragedy," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "King Abdullah should uphold Saudi Arabia's international legal obligations by commuting this death sentence."

Human Rights Watch said the court appeared to have refused a request from the boy's family for psychological tests.

The families of Ahmad and the murdered girl are Egyptian nationals living in the kingdom. Saudi law allows murder cases to be settled by payment of blood money to the victim's relatives but Wala's parents have turned down offers of compensation. In the meantime, Ahmad remains on death row at a juvenile detention centre in Dammam.

Saudi diplomats in London could not be contacted for comment yesterday.