Two Filipinos escaped the death penalty in Saudi Arabia following the intercession of a Filipino Sharia court judge, reports reaching Manila said yesterday. Alexander Hugo and Jovencio Praxidio were two of six Filipinos convicted of killing a compatriot who had won 270,000 Saudi riyals in an underground lottery operated by Filipinos in Jeddah.
Both men were sentenced to five and seven years respectively since the court determined the two were not at the scene of the crime. In a report to the Department of Foreign Affairs office in Manila, Consul General to Jeddah Kadatuan Usop said the lower sentence was an offshoot of the intercession by Justice Saaluddin Alauya of the Filipino Shariah appellate court.
Alauya, who represented the six Filipino suspects in Jeddah as a 'friend of the court', was sent by the foreign affairs department to Jeddah in a last-ditch effort to save the workers from the death penalty. Besides Hugo and Praxidio, the four others are Wilfrido Bautista, Miguel Fernandez, Tony Alvesa and Sergio Aldana.
They were charged with killing Jaime de la Cruz in January last year. De la Cruz, a laundryman at Al-Hada Armed Forces Hospital in Taif, was found dead from stab wounds a day after he won 270,000 Saudi riyals in an illegal lottery. The Saudi police rounded up the 42 Filipinos working in the military hospital.
They later detained only six and charged them with murder, a capital offence punishable by death under Sharia law. Although given lower penalties, Hugo and Praxidio objected to the decision and submitted handwritten statements.
Hugo explained his case in a two-page statement; Praxidio was more explicit in his 18-page objection. The consulate reported that the Taif Higher Court president Judge Furayan, treated the handwritten objections as an appeal to reconsider his decision.
"Once translated, they will be deliberated upon by the Special Committee of three judges, who could still modify their sentence," Usop said. Alauya also asked the court about the decision on the four accused Filipinos.
Furayan apparently hinted that the four workers may get a harsher penalty, noting that they "are differently situated" from Hugo and Praxidio since "they were present at the crime scene." The court has not yet scheduled the next hearing for the four workers.
Two Filipinos escape death penalty in Saudi Arabia
Two Filipinos escaped the death penalty in Saudi Arabia following the intercession of a Filipino Sharia court judge, reports reaching Manila said yesterday. Alexander Hugo and Jovencio Praxidio were two of six Filipinos convicted of killing a compatriot who had won 270,000 Saudi riyals in an underground lottery operated by Filipinos in Jeddah.
