death penalty news April 19, 2005
SAUDI ARABIA: PBS revisits controversial 1977 execution PBS has had its tote bags in a wringer too many times to count over the years. Yet despite hassles over public television allegedly being too liberal, too British and too expensive, there never has been a controversy to equal the one over the 1980 docudrama Death of a Princess. The dramatization of the 1977 public execution of Saudi Princess Misha'al and her lover for adultery was too honest for some important constituencies. The Saudi government was furious, fearful of a backlash in those parts of the world where societal attitudes toward women aren't cemented in The Flintstones era. To show it meant business, after Death of a Princess aired first in Great Britain, the British ambassador to Saudi Arabia was ordered out of the country. Mobil Oil, then a major PBS underwriter whose interests were obvious, took out newspaper ads condemning the program. The U.S. government, also intent on keeping the flow of oil gushing, conveyed concerns to PBS. The uproar reached such a crescendo that it gained the scrutiny of a youthful Ted Koppel on Nightline. To its credit, PBS stood its ground and aired the program, which will have a 25th anniversary encore on Frontline, followed by a discussion about what, if anything, has changed in the quarter-century interim. As is often the case, the controversy probably increased the audience for the film, which except for the needlessly repetitive gruesome execution scenes is dry and talky. However, this should not be confused with uninteresting. Writer-director Antony Thomas traveled extensively throughout Europe and the Middle East between July and November 1978 to get a feel for how a favored offspring of an Arab ruler could come to such a fate and what this atrocity symbolized in regard to the status of women in the Middle East in the late 20th century. He was forced to make the film a docudrama rather than a pure documentary because many of those who agreed to talk to him were intimidated from appearing on camera or even being identified. Much of the film is devoted to speculation as to why this woman of privilege and status essentially chose to commit suicide. In order for a conviction of adultery in Saudi Arabia, there have to be at least four male eyewitnesses (or eight women) to the actual sex act. The only other route to a conviction is for one of the accused to confess three times publicly. This is what Princess Masha'al did, despite pleas from the king -- her father's brother -- to remain silent and spare herself and her lover. Without her confession, she would have escaped with impunity. A man identified as Sa'eed Badra -- an acknowledged alias -- speculates that the spoiled and pampered princess was a petulant youth. She had been forced into an arranged marriage, which she rebelled against. Allowed to go to a university in Beirut, Lebanon, she became caught up in the feelings of liberation in the more modern nation. This is where she took a lover. "She completely lost her head," Badra says. "She forgot who she was. A royal princess; the king's niece; a married woman." Another man, identified as Shaheen, says the princess apparently decided that she would rather die than be forced back into the regimented life of women in her country. A woman named Samia, who says she knew the princess in Beirut, agrees with this theory. "I think that when she weighed it out, she thought that if she carried on living the way they wanted her to live, she would also have destroyed herself. So in that way, she felt that she still had her dignity. That's very important." One theory, totally unsubstantiated, is that the princess wasn't killed at all, that her family paid a Bedouin family a substantial amount to substitute one of its children. In footage of the public execution the victim is covered from head to toe in black garments and her face is never seen. Interestingly, the first voice heard justifying the princess' fate is a woman, who was employed by her grandfather as a nanny for 18 months. Even though she says she was so upset by what happened to Princess Masha'al that she couldn't eat, became hysterical and eventually left Saudi Arabia, she defended the execution. "It's their way. It's their law." The most distressing aspect of Death of a Princess is the realization that in a new millennium, very little has changed in a nation the United States props up. A channel-surfer settling on PBS could easily assume this is a story from today's headlines. The absence of protests this time around seems to suggest that Saudi Arabia doesn't even care what we think anymore. This makes Death of a Princess as compelling today as it was in 1980. (source: South Florida Sun-Sentinel)
