Masha'il bint Fahd al Saud
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| Misha'al bint Fahd al Saud |
|---|
| House of Saud |
| Misha'al bint Fahd bin Mohammed bin Abdul Aziz al Saud |
Misha'al bint Fahd al Saud (1958 – 1977) (Arabic: الأميرة مشاعل بنت فهد بن محمد آل سعود) was a Saudi Arabian princess who was executed, although it has been claimed that she was illegally killed[1], in 1977, at the age of 19. She was a granddaughter of Prince Muhammad bin Abdul Aziz, who was an older brother of the then King of Saudi Arabia, Khalid bin Abdul Aziz.
Her family sent her at her own request to Lebanon to attend school. While there, she and the nephew of the Saudi ambassador fell in love and began an affair. They continued the affair in secret after their return to Saudi Arabia. After attempting to fake her own drowning and being caught trying to escape from Saudi Arabia with her lover, she was tried. By Sharia law, a person can only be convicted of adultery by the testimony of actual witnesses to the act, or by their own admission of guilt, stating three times in court "I have committed adultery." There were no witnesses. Her family urged her not to confess, but instead to merely promise never to see her lover again. On her return to the court room, she repeated her confession: "I have committed adultery. I have committed adultery. I have committed adultery." She was executed i, in a opposition to Sharia law , since she was not married. Also, her man was executed in the same day. (unknown if he was married or not.)
[edit] Controversy
According to Antony Thomas there was no trial nor was there an official execution.[2]
It wasn't a trial. She wasn't even executed in the Square of Justice. She was just executed in a car park. I've witnessed executions in Saudi Arabia, I'm afraid. They're always done in a special square. This wasn't even done there. It wasn't done with an official executioner, not that that would make it any worse or any better. But this was not following the process of any law.
A good argument can also be made that according to Sharia law, fornication is punishable by flogging while it is adultery that is punishable by death, and death by stoning at that. Since the princess was unmarried, her punishment should have been only flogging.
Her death and events that led up to it are believed to have been the inspiration for the fictionalized docu-drama Death of a Princess (1980):
The difference between the official version, which was the girl was killed because she was found guilty of adultery, and the truth of it, which turns out that she was, in fact, executed by the king's elder brother in an act of tribal vengeance in a parking lot in Jeddah, was, in fact, the heart of the controversy because that was the part that, of course, the royal family could not countenance. And that was the great outrage.
—David Fanning, Cowriter and Executive Producer of Death of a Princess
