Indonesian woman on death row in Saudi Arabia can be freed — if she can pay IDR 20 billion in blood money

Protester outside the Saudi Arabian embassy in Jakarta on November 2, 2018, demanding an end to the death penalty and greater protections for Indonesian migrant workers in the Middle Eastern kingdom. Photo: Migrant CARE
(@migrantcare) / Twitter
Protester outside the Saudi Arabian embassy in Jakarta on November 2, 2018, demanding an end to the death penalty and greater protections for Indonesian migrant workers in the Middle Eastern kingdom. Photo: Migrant CARE (@migrantcare) / Twitter

Following widespread outcry over the execution of Tuty Tursilawati — an Indonesian citizen who was executed in Saudi Arabia last week without any prior notice given to her family or the Indonesian government — authorities here are attempting to save the life of another Indonesian woman on death row in the Middle Eastern kingdom, but her freedom will only come at a high price. Literally.

Eti bint Toyib Anwar has been on death row in Saudi Arabia for 16 years after being given the death penalty for murdering her employer. The Indonesian government says she now has an opportunity to avoid her execution and be released, but only if she is able to pay IDR20 billion (US$1.38 million) to pay the family of her alleged victim.

The Saudi legal system allows the family of murder victims to demand that their killers be executed, or they can forgive them. That forgiveness can be given freely or it can be bought for a certain amount of diya, a term which is often referred to as “blood money”.

In the case of Eti, the family agreed to a diya payment of 5 million Saudi riyal, which is equivalent to about IDR20 billion, a figure that the Indonesian government had to negotiate down to from a much higher initial demand.

“The [victim’s family] originally proposed 30 million riyal for the diya, around IDR120 billion. That is honestly very irrational to me. But we negotiated about eight times to get the number down to 5 million riyal,” Indonesia’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Agus Maftuh Abegebriel, told Detik on Tuesday

Agus said the Indonesian government actually has a fund for making blood money payments such as this, but the amount available only goes up to IDR2 billion. However, he said that he personally had been able to raise IDR10 billion in additional donations from his colleagues in the santri (Islamic religious school) network.

But that obviously still leaves another IDR8 billion to go and the family of Eti’s alleged victim have said the full amount must be paid before the next holy month of Ramadan begins in May 2019.

Agus did not mention what other efforts were being made to try and raise the remaining IDR8 billion required to save Eti’s life, but it is unlikely the government will make any more extraordinary efforts to have her spared.

Even after the widespread outcry over Tuty Tursilawati’s execution last week, the Indonesian government did little but make statements expressing their protest (or regret, as President Joko Widodo put it in his statement) over her execution without notification, stopping well short of taking any punitive action against Saudi Arabia. In addition to Eti, there are still 12 other Indonesian citizens currently on death row in the Middle Eastern kingdom.



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