Sri Lankan leader appeals for maid on death row

President Mahinda Rajapaksa wrote to Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah after a court confirmed the death sentence of Sri Lankan maid Rizana Nafeek for killing an infant five years ago, a government statement said.
Nafeek was first sentenced to death in 2007 — sparking protests by international human rights groups that say Nafeek was a minor when the incident took place and that the infant died because of suffocation when the maid tried to bottle-feed him.
Nafeek appealed her sentence, and her parents traveled from a poor village in eastern Sri Lanka to Saudi Arabia to meet the baby’s parents and ask for a pardon. But they were refused a meeting.
Sri Lanka earns a large part of much-needed foreign currency through the remittances of some 1.5 million expatriate workers — mostly citizens who work abroad as maids and drivers. Nearly 400,000 of them work in Saudi Arabia alone.