Saudi court sentences woman to 100 lashes over extramarital sex

A Saudi Arabian tribunal has sentenced a 40-year-old Kenyan home worker, Esther Wanja Muthoni, to 100 lashes for having enactment extracurricular marriage.

The sentence, handed down successful October, followed respective tribunal hearings held and has near Muthoni acrophobic of the punishment portion struggling to instrumentality to Kenya with her one-year-old son.

The New York Times reported connected Tuesday that Muthoni had spent much than a twelvemonth trying to permission Saudi Arabia with her kid but was incapable to bash truthful due to the fact that of the transgression proceedings against her.

“I americium truthful afraid. I don’t deliberation I tin endure those lashes,” she told the paper successful a telephone interrogation past month.

Muthoni, a parent of five, had been moving legally arsenic a home idiosyncratic done Maharah Human Resources, a Saudi recruitment company, erstwhile she became large pursuing a little narration with an Egyptian antheral identified lone arsenic Mohamud.

She gave commencement successful August 2025 astatine unit accommodation. According to tribunal documents reviewed by the newspaper, a supervisor discovered her and took her and the babe to a hospital, wherever constabulary subsequently detained her for questioning implicit the pregnancy.

During questioning, Muthoni reportedly told the constabulary that the child's begetter had near Saudi Arabia. The tribunal documents did not disclose his surname.

Although she was aboriginal released from constabulary custody, she was reportedly denied entree to her unit accommodation and a shelter, forcing her to unrecorded astatine a petrol presumption successful Riyadh.<...