WORLD BRIEFING / SAUDI ARABIA
Saudi Arabia’s king waived the flogging sentence of a female journalist charged with involvement in a risque TV show, the second such pardoning in a high-profile case by the monarch in recent years.
King Abdullah’s decision to waive 22-year-old journalist Rozanna Yami’s sentence of 60 lashes follows intense international media attention.
Yami was charged with helping coordinate a talk show on a Lebanese channel featuring a Saudi man describing what appeared to be his active sex life. Though the charges against her were dropped, a judge ordered the flogging as a deterrent, Yami said.
In 2007, the king waived a flogging sentence against a rape victim for being alone in a car with an unrelated man shortly before the two were attacked.
The case also sparked international outrage over the Saudi judiciary.
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