Cash plea as maid faces beheading

Indonesians are campaigning to raise half a million dollars to stop the beheading of a maid in Saudi Arabia. They are asking for donations on TV and social networking sites like Facebook. A Riyadh court found Darsem binti Dawud Tawar guilty in May 2009...

Indonesians are campaigning to raise half a million dollars to stop the beheading of a maid in Saudi Arabia.

They are asking for donations on TV and social networking sites like Facebook.

A Riyadh court found Darsem binti Dawud Tawar guilty in May 2009 of murdering her Yemeni employer and sentenced her to death.

She claimed it was self-defence, saying her boss had tried to rape her.

Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Kusuma Habir says the victim's family agreed to pardon Darsem if she came up with 530,000 dollars - known in Arabic as "diyat" or blood money - by July.

She says they've already collected 265,000 dollars, thanks to social networking site campaigns, television ads and appeals by local officials.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.