Doha: A Qatari national may face death sentence for raping a female relative and abusing another man along with three other suspects, a Qatari newspaper reported yesterday.
The case came one week after a landmark judgment where a Qatari couple got five years in jail for assaulting a maid, who has been lying in a coma for two years now.
"Qataris should not believe they are above the law," sources at the trial told Gulf News quoting the judge as saying at the trial.
Although it was the first sentence of its kind in the country, members of the Indonesian Women's Association attending the trial complained that the sentence was too mild.
Deterrent
In the former case brought to the Criminal Court on Wednesday, the public prosecutor asked for the "maximum possible sentence" against four rapists, three Qataris and an Egyptian, "to serve as a lesson" for those who plan to commit such crimes, the English-language Gulf Times said.
The four men are accused of raping a 22-year-old Qatari woman, a relative of one of the convicts, and abusing another man on November 26, 2005. The Criminal Court is due to issue its verdict on June 6.
"We ask for maximum possible punishment to serve as a lesson to those who dare perpetrate such an obscene crime," the prosecutor was reported as saying by court reporters at the trial.
Under Article 283, Section 11 of the Criminal Code, sexual abuse of a man carries a maximum penalty of 15 years' jail.
However the Gulf Times reported a legal source as saying that one of the Qatari convicts, who is also a relative of the victim, could be sentenced to death under Article 279, Section 11 of the 2004 Criminal Code.
According to the charges filed by the prosecution, the two victims were forcibly pulled out of a car in a public place on November 25 last year and abused. A forensic expert told the judges on Wednesday that semen samples found on the clothes of the victim matched those of the accused. However, he said there were traces of semen of a fifth person.
This is not the first case at the Criminal Court, where prosecutors ask for more stringent punishments against convicts, including Qatari nationals to set 'model sentences' that would discourage crimes.
