Domestic worker Rizana Nafeek was sentenced to death on 16 June for a murder committed while she was 17 years old.

She was arrested in May 2005 in Jeddah on charges of murdering an infant in her care. She had no access to lawyers either during interrogation or at her trial and was believed to have confessed to the murder during police questioning. She has since retracted her confession.

She apparently told the authorities that she was born in February 1988, but they seem to have ignored this on the basis that her passport indicated that she was born in February 1982. According to information available to Amnesty International no medical examination is believed to have been carried out to< ascertain her age, nor was she given the opportunity to present her birth certificate, which reportedly shows that she was born in 1988.

Rizana Nafeek is believed to have appealed against her sentence, but if her appeal is unsuccessful she could be executed within days. 

Saudi Arabia is a state party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which expressly prohibits the execution of offenders for crimes committed when they were under 18 years old.

Source:
Amnesty International