Arrested for idol worship

A Sri Lankan youth employed as a domestic aid has been arrested in Saudi Arabia for worshiping a statue of the Buddha, which is considered an offence according to Shariah law.

According to the Bodu Bala Senaa, the youth bearing passport no. 2353715 identified as Premanath Pereralage Thungasiri has been arrested by Umulmahami Police, which is a grave situation.

The organisation states that information has been received regarding a plan that is underway to behead a Sri Lankan youth employed in domestic service in Saudi Arabia. Although a complaint has been lodged at the Foreign Employment Bureau, Battaramulla, under complaint no: CN/158/1205, so far no action has been taken.

While the youth is a Buddhist, the charge levelled against him is that he paid obeisance to the Buddha at the house where he was employed.

The Bodu Bala Senaa organisation further said those employed in Muslim countries are prevented from practicing their religious faiths, and if found to do so are punished severely. Recently a Sri Lankan woman was arrested for gazing at a child at a shopping complex, where she was accused of witchcraft, on the grounds that she had a black cord around her wrist.

However, the organisation accused the Foreign Employment Bureau officials of not educating the Sri Lankan workers travelling to Saudi Arabia regarding the laws in those countries pertaining to religious rights. Therefore, many of our migrant workers in Saudi Arabia face these situations due to their ignorance of the prevailing laws of those countries.

On prior occasions too many Sri Lankan female domestic workers were forced to embrace Islam, and wear the traditional attire, while so far four Sri Lankan youth have been beheaded in that country.

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'Witch' housemaid controlled family for 20 years

An Indonesian housemaid controlled a Saudi family for nearly 20 years by forcing them to follow her orders through magic before she was arrested by the Gulf Kingdom’s feared religious police.

The father finally decided to resort to the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice after his family plunged into more health problems and his children and wife “blindly” listened to the maid.

Commission members asked the father to bring his daughter, who appeared to be the worst affected by the magic spell, Sharq Arabic language newspaper said in a report from the western town of Madina.

After a spiritual treatment session, the girl woke up from an apparent trance and told Commission members that she knows about the magic work.

“She led them to a tree near her house and told them the maid had buried magic stuff there…they dug under the tree and found needles, threads, keys, lockets and other items which belong to the family,” it said.

“They took them to the Commission centre, where experts dismantled their effect…the maid was arrested while the family started to return to normal.”

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Police raid smurf concert

Police raided a theatre performance in Saudi Arabia where schoolkids had dressed up as the Smurf's because the music was un-Islamic.

The raid happened in the city of Taif after complaints about the religious music that was being played to accompany the performance by the kids aged between five and nine.

The Saudi Arabian newspaper "El Sharq" said that the anti-Smurf action by the police took place in front of a performance in front of around 2000 primary school children.

It said that the police raid had not gone down well with the audience who had protested loudly.

Although not illegal to play music in public many Saudis regard it as unIslamic.

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Saudi Arabia: Beheadings for ‘witchcraft’

A Sri Lankan woman is currently facing decapitation by sword on a witchcraft charge in Saudi Arabia, in accordance with Wahhabism, a strict form of Sunni Islam. The UN reports executions tripled in the kingdom in 2011. ­A Saudi man complained that in a shopping mall his 13-year-old daughter “suddenly started acting in an abnormal way, which happened after she came close to the Sri Lankan woman,” reports the daily Okaz. After the local man denounced the Sri Lankan for casting a spell on his daughter, police in the port city of Jeddah found it sufficient cause to arrest the woman. Witchcraft and sorcery imply only one measure in Saudi Arabia – beheading. And it works this way in practice: last year in the kingdom at least two people – a woman in her 60s and a Sudanese man – were beheaded on witchcraft charges. In the absolute monarchy that Saudi Arabia is, a criminal code does not exist per se. Court sentences are based on Islamic Sharia law on the interpretation of judges. ­No sticking your neck out under Sharia law ­Capital punishment is applied regularly and indiscriminately to locals and foreign citizens. [Click here to read full article]

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Saudi couple blames jinn for their poverty

Passers by in a busy street in the Saudi capital Riyadh look with curiosity at a man and his wife who turned a building corner on the pavement into their house. The two, looking poor and untidy, blame the jinn (spirits) for their ordeal.

Their open-air accommodation does not have any of the modern life facilities except for their mattress, blankets, pillows and a few cups and water bottles.

As if to underscore their problem, the two Saudi citizens chose to squat a corner which is just across the road from the government grievances court, which is daily flooded by hundreds of people seeking justice.

The unshaven Mansoor looks as if he has not had a bath for weeks while his wife’s sight is weakening almost every day and she will eventually become blind in the absence of medical care, according to a Saudi newspaper.

“I am under magic spell because of what has befallen me,” said the lean, brown man, quoted by the Arabic language daily Sabq.

Mansoor said he had a house before he was sacked “without any reason” from his job at the ministry of finance. He now has no house and has been deprived from his pension “for some reason.”

Although his wife kept interrupting him to shut up, he went on:”I have a son from another wife and he is now 20 years old…but I don’t see him….I also have 16 brothers but they are useless as they never tried to help me…I have been to many government departments for help but they refused to help,” he said.

“I then got a job as a security man but they later sacked me…I then got a job as a school bus driver but again they sacked me shortly later saying I am no good…I then decided to sell fruit and vegetable but government inspectors came and impounded my stuff…one day, a person I don’t know came to me and said he would help but he never come back…I am sure I am haunted with jinns.”

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Mystery of the Middle Eastern Girls Who Cry Stones

Strange phenomena or an elaborate hoax from the Middle East, young girls who expel multiple stones from their eyes?

Posted below four video news reports from India, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan of young girls expelling multiple stones from their eyes. This week India’s TV 9 Pavada Purana news posted videos on Youtube of two young girls in India ‘crying’ stones from her eyes.

India TV 9 news report, February 13, 2012, one of two Indian girls who ‘cry’ stones:



Is this girl 7-yr-old Kura Nitya?

Metro News, November 17, 2011, Seven-year-old Indian girl Kura Nitya cries ‘tears’ of stone:

“According to a local newspaper, Kura has been excreting stones from her right eye for the last two weeks but doctors are not sure what is causing the phenomenon.

On average the young girl weeps between 12 to 25 stones a day. Nitya says she doesn’t feel any pain but her right eye swells before the stones drop out.

Her grandfather Gopal Reddy says he first noticed the strange happenings in October. ‘Initially, we thought it was some divine power and prayed to God for this phenomenon to stop,’ he told the Star online.

The girl’s parents have seen several different specialists but none have had an answer.

Ophthalmologist Dr Kalyan Chakaravarthy said Nitya was healthy and he could find no reason as to why she was weeping stones.”

India TV 9 news report of older Indian girl ‘crying’ multiple stones from her eyes:



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Saudi woman beheaded for ‘practicing witchcraft’

RIYADH: A Saudi woman was beheaded Monday after being convicted of practising sorcery, which is banned in the ultra-conservative kingdom, the Interior Ministry said.

Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar was executed in the northern province of Jawf for “practising witchcraft and sorcery,” the ministry said in a statement carried by SPA state news agency.

It is not clear how many women have been executed in the desert-kingdom, but another woman was beheaded in October for killing her husband by setting his house on fire.

The beheading took to 73 the number of executions in Saudi Arabia this year.

In September, Amnesty International called on the Muslim kingdom where 140 people were on death row to establish an “immediate moratorium on executions.”

The rights group said Saudi Arabia was one of a minority of states which voted against a U.N. General Assembly resolution last December calling for a worldwide moratorium on executions.

Rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking are all punishable by death under Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law.

Amnesty says Saudi Arabia executed 27 convicts in 2010, compared to 67 executions announced the year before.

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Saudi divers find 22 'magic' items under water

Saudi divers involved a government clean-up campaign at the Gulf Kingdom’s beaches tumbled across 22 talismans and other magic items, which were handed to the religious police for destruction.

Nearly 100 divers took part in the campaign, which resulted in the removal of more than four tonnes of waste along the beach and the sea bed in the northwestern town of Tabuk, newspapers said.

The waste included 22 talismans and other items involving magic spells and were handed to the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice,” the Arabic language daily Sabq said.

“The anti-magic committee examined the items and found that some of them are still active and that they have been dumped there for magic work….all those items were neutralized and destroyed by the committee.”

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Saudi Arabia executes man convicted of "sorcery"

20 September 2011
Saudi Arabia's government should establish an immediate moratorium on executions in the kingdom, Amnesty International said today after a Sudanese man convicted of "sorcery" was put to death.

Abdul Hamid bin Hussain bin Moustafa al-Fakki was beheaded in Madina on Monday. Saudi Arabia has now executed 44 people this year. Eleven were foreign nationals.

"Abdul Hamid's execution is appalling as is Saudi Arabia's continuing use of this most cruel and extreme penalty," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International's Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

"That he should have been executed without having committed anything that would appear to constitute a crime is yet another deeply upsetting example of why the Saudi Arabian government should immediately cease executions and take steps to abolish the death penalty."

The crime of "sorcery" is not defined in Saudi Arabian law but it has been used to punish people for the legitimate exercise of their human rights, including their right to freedom of expression.

Abdul Hamid bin Hussain bin Moustafa al-Fakki was arrested in 2005 after he was entrapped by a man working for the Mutawa'een (religious police) who asked him to produce a spell that would lead to the man's father leaving his second wife.

It was alleged that Abdul Hamid said he would do this in exchange for 6,000 Saudi Arabian riyals (approximately US$1,600).

Reportedly beaten after his arrest, Abdul Hamid is believed to have been coerced to confess to carrying out acts of sorcery.

He was sentenced to death by the General Court in Madina in March 2007. Few details are available about his trial but he is reported to have been tried behind closed doors and without legal representation.

Amnesty International campaigned on Abdul Hamid's behalf following his arrest and had urged Saudi Arabia's King 'Abdullah to prevent his execution.

Since the end of the holy month of Ramadan a few weeks ago, the Saudi Arabian authorities have resumed executions at an alarming pace.

Seven people are known to have been put to death since executions resumed on 5 September, bringing the total executed so far this year to at least 44. In 2010 a total of 27 people were executed.

Two weeks ago Syrian national, Karim Ruslan Al-Ruslan was executed in the Jouf Region for smuggling drugs into the kingdom.

Around 140 prisoners are believed to be facing the death penalty in Saudi Arabia.

Last December, Saudi Arabia was one of a minority of states that voted against a UN general assembly resolution calling for the worldwide moratorium on executions.

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Djinns claim man in spooky valley: report

A Saudi man is believed to have been gripped by jinn (ghosts) during a picnic with his friends in a valley which is reputed to be haunted. But he was later treated in an exorcist-style session by the Gulf Kingdom’s religious police.

The unnamed man and seven friends from the western town of Makkah were vacationing in the nearby Taif city when they decided to descend into Wadi Al-Amak (the deep abyss) despite warnings by local people.

After a short evening trip in the valley, the colour of the man’s began to change and his behavior became aggressive before he lost balance and fell down.

When his friends tried to talk to him, he shouted and pushed them away while his eyes were fixed at an area deep in the valley.

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Lost City of Iram

The great H. P. Lovecraft, achieved early fame with his 1921 story, The Nameless City. It tells the story of Abdul Alhazarad, an Arab scholar whose quest for the secrets of black magic led him into a remote, forbidding area of the Sahara Desert. There, he stumbled upon an ancient city unknown to the outside world, a center for sorcery and witchcraft, inhabited by djinni and afreets, the ghouls and demons of Semitic folklore.

Passing through the dark streets and among the lofty columns of Iram, as the gloomy city was known to its residents, he entered the temple of their patron deity, Cthulhu, a satanic figure. The high priest in attendance entrusted him with a thaumaturgic tome, the Al Azif. But translating its horrific text into Latin as the Necronomicon proved too much for Abdul, and he went raving mad before completing his task. While most readers assume The Nameless City was an entirely original creation of Lovecraft's fertile imagination, he actually based it on ancient Arab oral accounts.

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Giant archaeological trove found in Google Earth

Wendy Zukerman, Asia Pacific reporter

Indiana Jones, put down your whip. To scour the globe for archaeological sites these days all you need is a desktop computer.

Almost two thousand potential archaeological sites in Saudi Arabia have been discovered from an office chair in Perth, Australia, thanks to high-resolution satellite images from Google Earth.

"I've never been to Saudi Arabia," says David Kennedy from the University of Western Australia, Australia. "It's not the easiest country to break into."

Instead Kennedy scanned 1240 square kilometres in Saudi Arabia using Google Earth. From their birds-eye view he found 1977 potential archaeological sites, including 1082 "pendants" - ancient tear-drop shaped tombs made of stone.

According to Kennedy, aerial photography of Saudi Arabia is not made available to most archaeologists, and it's difficult, if not impossible, to fly over the nation. "But, Google Earth can outflank them," he says.

Kennedy confirmed that the sites were vestiges of an ancient life - rather than vegetation or shadow - by asking a friend in Saudi Arabia, who is not an archaeologist, to drive out to two of the sites and photograph them.

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Israelis deny vulture captured by Saudis is a spy

An Israeli avian specialist has called for the release of a vulture that was reportedly detained in Saudi Arabia for being an Israeli spy.

Ohad Hatzofe, an Avian Ecologist from the Division of Science and Conservation at Israel's Nature and Parks Authority, said that the bird was probably "part of a movement in migration of birds" and not an Israeli-born vulture.

Saudi Arabian officials "detained" the vulture after reportedly alleging it was spying for Israel.

The bird was reported to have been found in a rural area of the country wearing a GPS logger and a leg bracelet bearing the words "Tel Aviv University", according to the reports, which surfaced first in the Israeli daily Ma'ariv.

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One year old child found pregnant in Saudi Arabia

One year old child found pregnant in Saudi Arabia. Doctors says it’s a unique case for this world! Medical Science Report says : “When the mother of this child was pregnant, she had 2 fetuses inside her. But one of the fetus grew inside the other, this why this girl was born with the other fetus inside her womb.”

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Weird creature captured in Saudi Arabia

The creature in the video was killed after attacking a shepherd in the desert of Saudi Arabia.

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Saudi Arabia steps up hunt for 'witches' and 'black magicians'

When the popular 46-year-old Lebanese psychic Ali Sibat went on-air and made his predictions about the future, the phone lines of the satellite television station Sheherazade used to be flooded with calls.

But what the star psychic probably did not predict was that his claims to supernatural prowess would land him a death sentence...

"He was the most popular psychic on the channel," the Lebanese news agency Naharnet quoted Sibat’s lawyer May Khansa as saying. "The number of callers, including from all over the gulf, spiked in number when he appeared."

But while on pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia last year, Sibat was spotted by religious police in the holy city of Medina. Their job it is to battle vice and uphold virtue in the ultraconservative kingdom. So they arrested Sibat in his room at the Medina Hotel on charges of sorcery.

On Nov. 9, Sibat was given a death sentence by a Mecca court for allegedly practicing witchcraft.

Sibat’s fate is common in Saudi Arabia.

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Rights group rejects Saudi witchcraft charges

Rights group rejects Saudi witchcraft charges

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Saudi Arabia should overturn a death sentence imposed on a Lebanese national convicted of practicing witchcraft during a visit to the conservative kingdom, an international human rights group said in a report late Tuesday.

Human Rights Watch also called on the Saudi government to halt "its increasing use of charges of 'witchcraft,' crimes that are vaguely defined and arbitrarily used."

The report highlights the ongoing complaints over the Saudi justic system, which, while based on Islamic law, leaves a wide leeway to individual judges and can often result in dramatically inconsistent sentences.

Ali Sibat, a Lebanese psychic who made predictions on a satellite TV channel from his home in Beirut, was arrested by religious police in the holy city of Medina during a pilgrimage there in May 2008 and then sentenced to death Nov. 9.

Sibat is one of scores of people reported arrested every year in the kingdom by local papers for practicing sorcery, witchcraft, black magic and fortune-telling. These practices are considered polytheism by the government of this deeply religious Muslim country.

No officials could be reached to comment on Sibat's case or offer information on how many death sentences have been issued in witchcraft-related cases. Government offices in the kingdom are closed for the Muslim al-Adha Feast.

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