A Non-Rape in Qatar
From the Gulf Times in Qatar:
"US man cleared of rape, but is guilty of illicit relations"
An American man has been cleared of rape – but found guilty of having an illicit relationship with a British woman.
As a result, a Doha court has handed him a one-year suspended sentence with immediate deportation.
The court heard that the 56-year-old married woman told police officers in the UK that she had been raped on the last day of a week-long visit to Doha in August last year.
She made the allegation after undergoing medical tests for possible sexually transmitted diseases.
She said she had gone to the home of the accused – who lives in the same compound as the friends she was staying with – to return a lilo she had borrowed. She claimed that while inside his house and after drinking alcohol, the "physically repulsive" neighbour who resembled the late Queen singer Freddie Mercury, pounced on her.
Well, umm, I don't want to be the one to let the cat out of the closet, but I don't think Freddie Mercury pounced on very many women in his time.
However, Presiding Judge Mamon Hamour described the woman's rape claims as "weaker than a spider's house"...
Actually, according to the U.S. Dept. of Energy, a spider web "has a higher tensile strength than steel, but is not as rigid". Although, since it is organic, "something probably eats it", so maybe the judge has a valid legal point here.
...and found it hard to believe that in her written statement she could give such an accurate description of the interior of the American's home during such an ordeal. He noted: "It is unusual for someone whose immediate concern is to escape a rapist to care about the details."
This is where it starts to get disturbing (even more than mental images of Freddie Mercury pouncing on random passersby). If she had not been able to give an accurate description of the interior of the home, the judge would presumably have held that against her, saying it either proved that she was never in the home, or that she was too inebriated at the time to remember it. No matter what answer she gives, it will be used as evidence against her.
As the woman had also claimed in her statement that she could have prevented the rape if she had offered more resistance, the judge felt this was proof enough that she did not in fact resist.
The judge also pointed out that she had admitted to allowing a certain amount of physical contact to take place.
The court also frowned on her decision to make the rape allegation once she was out of the country and pointed out a lack of medical evidence to support her claims.
She probably waited until she was out of Qatar to make the claims because she knew what the penalty is under sharia for female victims of rape. If she cannot provide four male witnesses to the rape, SHE will instead be found guilty of having extra-marital relations, at which point her very life is endangered. According to the statistics, women are 22 times more likely to suffer rape in the U.S. than in Qatar. And this case is a perfect example of why rape is so rare in Dar al-Islam: officials just deny it happened, and/or blame the victim.
Posted on 6:49 AM by Artemis Gordon Glidden
