death penalty news July 20, 2004
OMAN / USA: Oman Sentences U.S. Woman to Death in Husband's Murder A Oman court sentenced a U.S. woman to death on Saturday for arranging her husband's murder, and jailed her 14-year-old son for three years, an official who attended the verdict said. In another case, the court gave a life sentence to a German woman, Dana Gerlich, and four Omanis for killing Gerlich's father in the Omani capital Muscat in December. The American woman was named as Rebecca Thompson. Police said in January she had confessed to hiring two Omani assailants to kill her husband, oil worker Mark Thompson. The two Omanis, both 17, were jailed for 10 years each. Thompson's body was discovered in late December. Within a week Omani police said his wife had hired two men to kill him and said all three had been detained and confessed to the crime. Gerlich was sentenced over the shooting, also in December, of her father Manfred Gerlich. Oman has strong military and diplomatic ties with the West and its society is more tolerant of Westerners than some countries in the mainly conservative Muslim Gulf region. (source: Reuters)
