DOHA // Qatar will deport a Dutch woman who was convicted of adultery on Monday and given a one-year suspended sentence after she reported being raped while on holiday in Qatar.
The 22-year-old woman, known as Laura, was also fined 3,000 Qatari riyals (Dh3,025), court officials said.
She did not attend the court hearing and denied the charge against her.
The male defendant, said by a court official to be Syrian and named as Omar Al Hasan, was sentenced to 100 lashes for having illicit sex and 40 lashes for consuming alcohol.
Al Hasan will undergo a medical examination to see if he is fit enough to withstand his punishment. He will not serve time in jail but will be deported after his punishment.
Dutch ambassador to Qatar Yvette Burghgraef-van Eechoud said the embassy would help Laura to leave Qatar.
“We will do everything to get her out of the country as soon as possible,” Ms Eechoud said, adding that she expected Laura to leave Qatar within the next few days.
In the Netherlands, Laura’s mother said: “I do not know yet when she gets home, but this is not most important,” she told the Dutch television NOS website. “The most important is that she gets home. I am so happy.”
Laura was arrested on March 14 and has since been held in custody.
Her lawyer said that the incident happened after she had visited a Doha hotel.
“She went dancing but when she returned to the table after the first sip of her drink, she realised that” she had been drugged, Brian Lokollo has said.
The young woman remembers nothing more until the following morning when she woke up in a totally unfamiliar apartment “and realised to her great horror, that she had been raped”, Mr Lokollo said.
The defendant had insisted that their night together had been consensual and that the woman had asked for money.
Adultery, or illicit sex, is treated as a serious crime in Qatar.
* Agence France-Presse
