Outrage over Saudi 'blood money' in 5-year-old girl's death

Online activists in Saudi Arabia are calling for harsher punishments for child abuse after reports that a prominent cleric received only a light sentence after confessing to the beating death of his 5-year-old daughter.

The social media campaign gaining momentum on Sunday is the latest attempt to use the Internet to pressure the kingdom's ultraconservative rulers.

Saudi media reports say Fayhan al-Ghamdi, a frequent guest on Islamic TV programs, was arrested in November on charges of killing the girl. The reports said he questioned the child's virginity.

Saudi media say he was freed last week after serving a short prison term and agreeing to pay $50,000 in "blood money" to avoid a possible death sentence.

The money was presumably offered to the girl's mother or other relatives.

South African 17-year-old dies of gang-rape injuries

A 17-year-old South African girl has died of injuries received in a gang rape at the weekend, provoking rare cries of outrage on Wednesday in a country with a high level of sexual violence.

In an echo of the gang-rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a New Delhi bus in December, the Cape Town-based Cape Argus newspaper said the victim was sliced open from her stomach to her genitals. She was dumped on a building site in the town of Bredasdorp, 130 km (80 miles) east of Cape Town.

The Indian case triggered protests against endemic anti-female violence. But the Bredasdorp murder is unlikely to provoke a similar outpouring of anger in South Africa, where women's groups say rape has lost the power to shock.

"It is difficult to find reason behind the many different acts of gang rape, child rape, rape of the elderly, corrective rape and male rape," the Women's League of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) said in a statement.