Philippine Officials Vow Maid Won’t Be Executed : Persian Gulf: Girl, 16, receives death penalty for killing the Arab employer she says raped her. In June, she was sentenced to seven years in prison.

Philippine officials and lawyers vowed Saturday to save the life of a 16-year-old Philippine maid convicted by an Islamic court in the United Arab Emirates of murdering her Arab employer.

A court in Al Ayn sentenced Sarah Balabagan to death Saturday for the premeditated murder of her employer, Almas Mohammed Baloushi. It rejected her testimony that she stabbed him 34 times in self-defense after he raped her.

Philippine Ambassador Roy Seneres said he and lawyers would begin hammering out an appeal against the sentence, which sparked shock and frustration among Filipinos at home and in the Persian Gulf.

Seneres said he was hopeful that Sheik Zayed ibn Sultan al Nuhayan, president of the United Arab Emirates, would pardon Balabagan if the appeal failed.

“She’s just a child. She did not come here to harm anyone,” Seneres said. “I have faith in the new judges. If all judicial remedies fail, we will appeal to Sheik Zayed for a pardon. He is known all over the world as the personification of justice.”

Zayed ordered a retrial of the case after the same court in June convicted Balabagan of manslaughter and jailed her for seven years. It said she had been raped and awarded her compensation.

The prosecution appealed the verdict as too lenient, and the dead man’s family demanded the death penalty.

A medical report presented at the first trial said that Balabagan, who was 15 at the time of the killing, had a “tear of the hymen” and “abrasions of the neck.”

But contradictory medical evidence in the retrial cast doubt on her rape claim, and the court said that in any case the killing was not connected. The chief judge said there was no evidence she had been raped and that she was still a virgin.

Seneres said the appeal strategy would bank on testimony from one of two physicians who said Balabagan had been raped.

“We will underscore the fact that she was indeed raped. One of the doctors who testified said Sarah had fresh wounds,” he said.

President Fidel V. Ramos of the Philippines said he will personally appeal to Zayed to save Balabagan from execution, and he urged her lawyers to launch an immediate appeal.

The unexpected verdict stunned Philippine Embassy officials and members of the 80,000-strong community they represent in this Gulf Arab state.

Newspapers in the United Arab Emirates have followed the trial closely. The nation’s official television and radio do not routinely report court cases.

The verdict is likely to ignite outrage in the Philippines, which has closely watched the plight of its 4 million overseas workers since Singapore hanged a maid in March for double murder.

Balabagan, wearing a light pink shirt and flowered red trousers, appeared tense and demoralized as she described the slaying to reporters shortly before the retrial sentence.

Motioning with her right hand in a stabbing gesture, she said: “I stabbed him so many times because I was not conscious of what I was doing.

“I have no regrets. . . . I want to go home,” she added as she clutched the metal bars of a holding cell outside the court.

When asked how she would advise other Philippine maids in the Gulf, she said: “I hope they will be strong enough for the challenges. . . . I will never leave home again.”