DFA seeks repatriation of beheaded OFW’s body
(UPDATED 8:56 p.m.) MANILA, Philippines — After failing to save the life of OFW Jenifer Bidoya who was convicted of murder in Saudi Arabia, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) on Wednesday said it has asked the Saudi government to at least allow the repatriation of the worker’s body to the Philippines.
Undersecretary Esteban Conejos, head of the DFA’s office of migrant workers affairs, said the department sought the repatriation in a note verbale, even as he hinted that that chances of getting such a request granted was dim.
“We hope the Saudi authorities would respond to it. In the past, they don’t allow the repatriation of persons executed. Why? Thats the law in Saudi Arabia. And they have to be buried within a certain number of hours and under their jurisdiction, there is a special gravesite in Saudi Arabia dedicated solely to those who were executed pursuant to a final judgment," he told reporters.
Bidoya was beheaded in the western Saudi city of Jeddah on Tuesday, one-and-a-half years after he was convicted of murdering a Saudi national and sentenced to death by the Jeddah Sharia'h Grand Court.
The death sentence was affirmed by the Tameez Court (Appellate Court) and later by the Supreme Judicial Council on April 21, 2008.
Conejos said President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo wrote King Abdullah ibn Abdulaziz Al-Saud twice — on December 6, 2007 and on July 7, 2008 requesting clemency for Bidoya.
But the victim's family was adamant in refusing to forgive Bidoya and insisted on the imposition of the death penalty, Conejos said.
“Under Shariah Law, the crime of murder results in a public and private liability. While the King of Saudi Arabia can forgive the public rights aspect of the case, he cannot extend clemency if the victim’s family insists on their right of quisas as they did on this case," Conejos said in a statement.
News reports from Saudi Arabia said the murder happened May 2005 in the holy city of Makkah (Mecca), with the accused suffocating the victim and piercing his neck with a pen. Other reports say the man Bidoya killed was his employer named Rurkie Al-Zahrmae.
Conejos said Bidoya was Zamboanga Sibugay province in Western Mindanao and was 24 when he committed the crime in 2005.
He said it was not true, as some members of the Filipino community in Saudi Arabia have been made to believe, that Bidoya was a homosexual.
“The victim came from a very conservative tribe," he told reporters, adding that there was an altercation between Bidoya and the Saudi man before the killing took place.
Officials of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA), however, were reportedly checking the true identity of beheaded Filipino amid information that he used the birth certificate of a neighbor named Venancio Ladion in processing his working papers.
He was said to have left to work for a shop in Taif, more than an hour’s drive from Jeddah, in February 2005. How he ended up in Makkah, which is off-limits to non-Muslims, was still unclear.
Conejos, meanwhile, said the government is actively monitoring 40 death penalty cases, 2 cases in Supreme Court (in one of the cases, there were two Filipinos involved), and 34 in various stages of judicial action.
Out of 64 potential death penalty cases since 2006, 24 commuted, 11 went home.
The last time a Filipino was executed in the oil-rich kingdom was in June 2007, when Reynaldo Cortez, 41, was beheaded in Riyadh for murdering a Pakistani taxi driver who allegedly tried to sexually assault him.
Several other Filipinos are on death row in various parts of Saudi Arabia, including three men from Pampanga province who were meted death last year for allegedly killing three fellow Filipinos in what has become known as the infamous “chop-chop killings of Jeddah."
The convictions are under appeal. - GMANews.TV
Undersecretary Esteban Conejos, head of the DFA’s office of migrant workers affairs, said the department sought the repatriation in a note verbale, even as he hinted that that chances of getting such a request granted was dim.
“We hope the Saudi authorities would respond to it. In the past, they don’t allow the repatriation of persons executed. Why? Thats the law in Saudi Arabia. And they have to be buried within a certain number of hours and under their jurisdiction, there is a special gravesite in Saudi Arabia dedicated solely to those who were executed pursuant to a final judgment," he told reporters.
Bidoya was beheaded in the western Saudi city of Jeddah on Tuesday, one-and-a-half years after he was convicted of murdering a Saudi national and sentenced to death by the Jeddah Sharia'h Grand Court.
The death sentence was affirmed by the Tameez Court (Appellate Court) and later by the Supreme Judicial Council on April 21, 2008.
Conejos said President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo wrote King Abdullah ibn Abdulaziz Al-Saud twice — on December 6, 2007 and on July 7, 2008 requesting clemency for Bidoya.
But the victim's family was adamant in refusing to forgive Bidoya and insisted on the imposition of the death penalty, Conejos said.
“Under Shariah Law, the crime of murder results in a public and private liability. While the King of Saudi Arabia can forgive the public rights aspect of the case, he cannot extend clemency if the victim’s family insists on their right of quisas as they did on this case," Conejos said in a statement.
News reports from Saudi Arabia said the murder happened May 2005 in the holy city of Makkah (Mecca), with the accused suffocating the victim and piercing his neck with a pen. Other reports say the man Bidoya killed was his employer named Rurkie Al-Zahrmae.
Conejos said Bidoya was Zamboanga Sibugay province in Western Mindanao and was 24 when he committed the crime in 2005.
He said it was not true, as some members of the Filipino community in Saudi Arabia have been made to believe, that Bidoya was a homosexual.
“The victim came from a very conservative tribe," he told reporters, adding that there was an altercation between Bidoya and the Saudi man before the killing took place.
Officials of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA), however, were reportedly checking the true identity of beheaded Filipino amid information that he used the birth certificate of a neighbor named Venancio Ladion in processing his working papers.
He was said to have left to work for a shop in Taif, more than an hour’s drive from Jeddah, in February 2005. How he ended up in Makkah, which is off-limits to non-Muslims, was still unclear.
Conejos, meanwhile, said the government is actively monitoring 40 death penalty cases, 2 cases in Supreme Court (in one of the cases, there were two Filipinos involved), and 34 in various stages of judicial action.
Out of 64 potential death penalty cases since 2006, 24 commuted, 11 went home.
The last time a Filipino was executed in the oil-rich kingdom was in June 2007, when Reynaldo Cortez, 41, was beheaded in Riyadh for murdering a Pakistani taxi driver who allegedly tried to sexually assault him.
Several other Filipinos are on death row in various parts of Saudi Arabia, including three men from Pampanga province who were meted death last year for allegedly killing three fellow Filipinos in what has become known as the infamous “chop-chop killings of Jeddah."
The convictions are under appeal. - GMANews.TV
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