COLOMBO: The mother of a Sri Lankan maid beheaded in Saudi Arabia for murder has rejected offers of cash from Saudi well-wishers following an outcry over the execution, a local newspaper said yesterday.
“I will not accept any gifts from the Saudis or the Saudi government which murdered my daughter,” Rizana Nafeek’s mother, Saiyadu Farina, told the Lankadeepa newspaper according to an excerpt of an interview on its website yesterday.
Sri Lankan newspapers say she has received cash offers exceeding two million rupees ($16,000) following the execution which was carried out on January 9 in Riyadh despite repeated appeals for clemency.
The local Daily Mirror said earlier this week that an advisor to the Saudi royal family had offered $1m to the family out of his own pocket during a visit to Sri Lanka last week.
The impoverished family lives in a make-shift home in the eastern village of Muttur. Nafeek had falsified her age and gone to Saudi Arabia as a maid to earn money to build a proper house for her family, according to family associates.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa who had pleaded on behalf of the maid denounced the execution and recalled Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Riyadh in protest.
AFP
