Pleas for Condemned Saudi 'Witch'

In 2005, Fawza Falih, an illiterate Saudi Arabian woman, was detained by religious police and was beaten in order to force her to admit to this illiteracy. Now she is being convicted of witchcraft and faces a death sentence. However, a US human rights group is asking for these charges to be dropped and that the religious police are charged for mistreatment.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7244579.stm

Witch hunts have been around for centuries, though they only began to occur frequently in Europe during the mid-1400s. At that time, they used torture and other trials to “prove” that a person practiced witchcraft. It lasted up until the early 1700s when it was outlawed in many European countries. Ms. Laih was charged because of written statements of people claiming she had bewitched them. The human rights group says that the “trial failed to meet the safeguards in the Saudi justice system.” Claims of witchery are undefined and extremely vague and are not even admissible in most countries.