T

hree Indonesian migrant workers who recently faced the death penalty for murder are scheduled to return home from Saudi Arabia.

A spokesman for the government-sanctioned Task Force for Indonesian Migrant Workers, Humphrey Djemat, said on Tuesday the migrant workers had been pardoned by the families of their victims.

“We’ve approached the victims’ families and they were willing to forgive the three migrant workers,” Humphrey told The Jakarta Post over the phone on Tuesday.

He expected the three migrants to arrive in Jakarta on Wednesday morning.

The maids are identified as Bayanah binti Banhawi, currently in Riyadh, Jamilah binti Abidin Rofi’I a.k.a. Juariyah Binti Idin Ropi’i in Mecca and Neneng Sunengsih binti Mamih in Al Jouf (a city 1,400 kilometers from Riyadh, near the Iraqi border), Indonesian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Gatot Abdullah Mansyur said.

He added that the Indonesian government had simultaneously asked for the pardon from the family of the victim allegedly killed by Jamilah along with an effort to challenge the verdict from the Saudi court, which ruled that Jamilah was found guilty of murdering her 80-year-old male employer and would be beheaded as a punishment.

“Jamilah’s employer’s family forgave her right before the [Saudi] King,” he told the Post.

The family did not ask for diyat or blood money, he said.

Meanwhile, Bayanah, 29, was accused of having killed her employer’s four-month-old baby, Gatot said.

“But there’s no sufficient evidence to prove the accusation, thanks to our lawyers. The baby died but it was an accident. The baby’s family only asked for SR 55,000 [US$14,666] in compensation,” he said, adding the government had paid for the compensation. (drs)