Senegalese maid in S Arabia faces death penalty
 

DAKAR: Human rights activists on Thursday demanded clemency for a Senegalese maid who was trafficked to Saudi Arabia and may face the death penalty after being charged with killing her employer.

Mbayang Diop, 22, was arrested in June, weeks after arriving in the world’s largest oil exporter, and accused of stabbing her employer to death in the capital of Riyadh, rights groups said.

Senegalese civil society groups say Diop may have killed the woman she worked for in self-defence after a dispute, and that the Saudi authorities had **t properly investigated the case.

On Wednesday, the Senegalese ambassador to Saudi Arabia visited Diop in prison in the eastern city of Dammam to provide assistance, Senegal’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

The Saudi embassy in Dakar was **t immediately available to comment on the case.

Diop left Dakar without telling her family, having been approached and offered work as a maid, said her brother, Fallou.

"If she had consulted us, we would have told her **t to go," he said, explaining how other women from their neighbourhood in Dakar had also moved to Saudi Arabia with the promise of work.

"She said she couldn’t rest - that the work was very hard.

"Diop, who is in jail awaiting trial, is one of a growing number of Senegalese women heading to the Middle East for domestic work, lured by the prospect of a salary and a chance to escape joblessness at home, according to Amnesty International.

But many have their passports confiscated by their employers and face abuse, said Amnesty’s regional director Alioune Tine.

"These women are of victims of violence and rape ...they are at the mercy of their employer, they are the property of their employer," Tine told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

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