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An Indonesian maid set to be beheaded for murder has been set free this week after her government paid the victim’s family ‘blood money’.
Darsem binti Dawud was sentenced to death by a judge in Saudi Arabia in May 2009 for the killing of a relative of her Yemeni employer. She alleged that the victim tried to rape her and pleaded that her attack was self-defence.
The Riyadh court was not convinced, but Darsem is now safely back in her home country after the victim’s family agreed to a 530,000 dollar (£340,000) pay-off.
But it was the government that eventually brought her home, with Riyadh's Vice Governor Prince Satham Abdulazis signed Darsem's rubber-stamping her freedom.
Five years after she left West Java for a new life with her son, Sapii, now five, she was reunited with her family at the Indonesian Foreign Ministry in Jakarta.
Her release follows the beheading on June 16 of another Indonesian maid working in Saudi Arabia, Ruyati binti Sapubi, who was also found guilty of murder.
The execution sent shock waves around Indonesia, not least because the Saudi government had apparently failed to inform Indonesian authorities of the date it would take place.
Human rights groups have repeatedly highlighted the abuse of maids - many of them foreign nationals - in Saudi Arabia.
Alone and unprotected, a large number have complained of being abused by their employers.
Female workers are particularly susceptible to violent physical attacks and rapes.
But many travel to the desert kingdom every year as work and wages are more plentiful than there than in their home countries.
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