Al-Tuhaif’s lawyer seeks her release from death penalty [Archives:2007/1029/Local News]
SANA'A, Feb. 28 ) At the request of Judge Abdullah Al-Olifi, a first instance court session was held Monday in Mahwit governorate to investigate Amina Al-Tuhaif's involvement in a traffic accident that led to killing her daughter and determine her complicity in the accident or not.
Al-Tuhaif arrived at the court under tight security to protect her from an exceptional attack by her husband's family.
Supreme Court lawyer Shadha Mohammed Nasser, who is Al-Tuhaif's attorney, is requesting Mahwit governorate's public prosecution review Al-Tuhaif's death sentence due to new evidence in the case.
Mohammed Sa'eed Ali, a fellow attorney in Nasser's office who attended the court session in Nasser's stead, is seeking to have the case dropped and release Al-Tuhaif from the death sentence, especially following her daughter's death.
“The court doesn't have the right to sentence Al-Tuhaif to death just because she became the only inheritor from both her daughter and her husband. So the death penalty is impossible to apply in Al-Tuhaif's case,” Nasser stated.
Al-Tuhaif now should be free according to Yemeni law, which prohibits executing those found guilty when they were under age 18 at the time a crime was committed, so she should be released immediately. Additionally, failing to release any prosecution against her will be injustice. Nasser noted that the case's next session will be after two weeks.
Nasser clarified that what official newspapers and other media outlets have published about President Ali Abdullah Saleh's amnesty decision is incorrect. “If President Saleh has commuted Al-Tuhaif's death sentence, it's only gossip. The information many newspapers published was untrue and it's just a way to skew public opinion about the case,” she added.
Al-Tuhaif remains imprisoned, but if such newspaper reports were correct, Al-Tuhaif might have been freed long ago.
Al-Tuhaif, a wife and mother who was just 16 when the alleged crime was committed, is accused of killing her husband Hizam. In reality, her family executed her when they deprived her of education and her childhood and forced her to marry as a child.
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