The Jubail female student, who was sentenced to 90 lashes and two months in prison, was punished for physically assaulting her headmistress and threatening to kill her, a statement of the Ministry of Justice said Tuesday. This was the first response of the ministry to the verdict that has attracted the attention of local and international media. The headmistress fell unconscious after being beaten by the student and was hospitalized for five days, the statement said. The headmistress had apparently reprimanded the student for bringing her cell phone, with a camera, to school. Phones with cameras are not allowed. The case was referred to court as a “last resort” after all disciplinary measures at the school had failed to correct the unruly behavior of the student, it added. The ministry said there were inaccurate news reports published about the story in the international media. These reports were meant to distort the reputation of the judicial system in Saudi Arabia, the statement said. The ministry also rejected reports that the student was only 13-years-old. “She is not a teenage girl. She is 20-years-old and registered in the home schooling program supervised by the Ministry of Education,” the statement added. The court dealt with the case of a grown-up woman, not a child, the ministry said. “Flogging will take place inside the women's prison, not on the school's premises in front of her classmates and teachers,” it added, in reference to reports that she will be flogged at school. The ministry denied news reports that the father of the student had not known about the verdict, and had only learned about it through the media. “He was present when the court handed down its ruling,” it said. “The verdict was announced to the student and she accepted it after consulting with her father,” the statement added. The Ministry of Justice has expressed concern about incorrect reporting of some foreign media outlets that have been biased about Shariah rulings in Saudi Arabia. The ministry has called for accurate reporting of court stories. The ministry said it would be happy to communicate with the media and answer all questions related to verdicts. The spokesman of the Human Rights Commission who talked about the case to the media “did not get his story from the legal source at the court,” the ministry statement added. The supervisor of the educational media department at the Ministry of Education said that his ministry believes in the independence of the Saudi court system. “The Ministry of Education will not intervene in the verdict,” said Fahd Al-Tayash, in a statement. Al-Tayash stated that the student was 20-years-old and registered at a Jubail intermediate school for older students. The Ministry of Education had been dealing for a while with the allegedly unruly behavior of the student during classes on the school's premises. The school had transferred her to the home schooling system over fears she was a bad influence on her classmates, he said. He said this was an individual matter and it did not reflect the general behavior of female students at that particular school or other schools across the Kingdom, he added.
