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JEDDAH (SAUDI ARABIA) - A SAUDI court has sentenced a 19-year-old victim of gang rape to six months in jail and 200 lashes - more than double her initial sentence - for being in the car of a man who was not her relative, said a local newspaper.
The decision, which many lawyers found shocking even by Saudi standards of justice, has sparked a rare public debate about the treatment of women here.
According to the Arab News, the court told the victim that her sentence was made harsher because of 'her attempt to aggravate and influence the judiciary through the media'.
The victim's name has not been released. She was gang-raped 14 times about a year and a half ago in Qatif, a city in the eastern province.
Her case has been widely debated since the court sentenced her to 90 lashes a year ago for being in the same car as an unrelated man, even after it ruled that she had subsequently been raped.
Saudi Arabia enforces a strict Islamic doctrine known as Wahhabism, which forbids unrelated men and women from associating with each other, bans women from driving and forces them to cover themselves from head to toe in public.
Adding to the charged political nature of the case, the convicted men are Sunni Muslims, the dominant community in the oil-rich Gulf state. The victim, however, is a member of the kingdom's Shi'ite Muslim minority, and the case has angered members of this community.
The young woman's offence was in meeting a former boyfriend, whom she had asked to return pictures he had of her because she was about to marry another man.
The couple were sitting in a car when a group of seven men kidnapped them and raped them both, lawyers told the Arab News.
The woman and the former boyfriend were originally sentenced to 90 lashes each for being together in private, while the attackers received sentences ranging from 10 months to five years in prison, and 80 to 1,000 lashes each.
The victim's lawyer, Mr Abdulrahman al-Lahem, a well-known human rights activist, drew the court's ire due to his strong public criticism of the handling of the case.
He appealed against the attackers' sentences, saying they were too lenient and his client's conviction was unjust.
In its new decision issued on Tuesday, the court increased the victim's sentence to 200 lashes and six months in jail. It also increased the sentences of her attackers to prison terms of two to nine years.
The woman remains free for the time being and has not yet been lashed. She is now married, and her husband told local reporters that he planned to appeal against the verdict.
Lashing is a common sentence under the Saudi penal code, with the punishment meted out in increments as offenders cannot survive hundreds of lashes at once.
'I don't agree with this judgment,' Mr Bassem Alim, a lawyer in Jeddah, said of the woman's sentence. 'I think it's overly severe. She should not be punished for going to the media and explaining her case.'
Mr Alim, a friend of the victim's lawyer, said the standard punishment for adultery was 60 to 80 lashes, so the sentence was unusually harsh, even for Saudi Arabia.
'I don't think she was committing adultery in that car,' Mr Alim added.
Some liberal commentators said the girl's sentence highlighted the justice system's failure to treat women fairly.
Mr Abeer Mishkhas, a columnist who writes frequently about women's rights, noted in the Arab News that a Riyadh court sentenced a Nigerian man to six years in prison and 600 lashes for rape.
His accomplice, who filmed the offence, was sentenced to 12 years in prison and 1,200 lashes.
'The girl in the Riyadh case was not punished though she had been involved earlier with one of the men. The Qatif girl was sentenced to 90 lashes because the court suspected the 'intention of doing something bad',' Mr Mishkas wrote.
Meanwhile, Mr Al-Lahem's licence to practise law has been suspended and he is to face a disciplinary hearing for appearing regularly on television and talking about the case.
NEW YORK TIMES, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, ASSOCIATED PRESS
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