Rape victim was an adulteress - Saudi ministry

Riyadh: The Saudi Justice Ministry announced that a girl gang raped by seven men and then sentenced to six months in prison and 200 lashes for adultery had confessed to cheating on her husband, in its latest response to the negative international reaction to the incident.

The statement confirmed that the flogging sentence against the rape victim would be carried out and condemned foreign interference. "The Saudi justice minister expressed his regret about the media reports over the role of the women in this case which put out false information and wrongly defend her," said the statement.

"The charged girl is a married woman who confessed to having an affair with the man she was caught with." In 2006 a Shiite Saudi 19-year-old, known only as the 'Girl from Qatif,' said she had recently been married and met a high school friend in his car to retrieve a picture of herself from him. While in a car with him, two men got into the vehicle and drove them to a secluded area where others waited, and then she and her companion were both raped.

She was sentenced to prison and 90 lashes for being alone with a man not related to her and when her lawyer, Abdul Rahman Al Lahem, appealed the sentence, he was removed from the case, his licence suspended and the penalty doubled to 200.

The Justice Ministry maintained, however, that the ruling was legal and followed the ''the book of God and the teachings of the Prophet Mohammad [PBUH]," noting that she had "confessed to doing what God has forbidden."

The ministry's account of the incident differed substantially from that given by the woman and her lawyer and largely glosses over her rape by seven men, focusing instead on her plan to meet her lover for tryst in his car "in a dark place where they stayed for a while."