Phillipines Negotiates With Kuwait To Save Filipino From Gallows

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine government is negotiating for the issuance of forgiveness from the victim's family to save a Filipino housemaid, who was found guilty of murder, from facing her death sentence, reported China's Xinhua news agency on Thursday.

Kuwait's Court of Appeals upheld the death sentence on overseas Filipino worker Jakatia Pawa for killing her employer's daughter in 2007.

Jakatia, 34, a native of Zamboanga Sibugay in southern Philippines, was sentenced this week to face the gallows by the Kuwaiti Court of Cassation for killing the 22-year-old daughter of her employer, whom she has worked for over five years.

Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Esteban Conejos said that after this negotiation, Philippine Vice President Noli De Castro will go to Kuwait to hand over a written letter from President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to the Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, to ask for commutation of her sentence from death to life imprisonment.

Speaking at a press briefing on Thursday, Conejos is optimistic that Pawa will be saved from the death sentence, citing the two cases of Marilou Ranario and Mae Vecina, who also met the same fate as Pawa.

The death sentences on the two persons were later commuted to life by Kuwait emir following a personal appeal from President Arroyo. Vecina has been granted royal pardon and returned to Manila on July 1, 2009.

About 73,000 Filipinos, including 60,000 women employed mostly as domestic helpers, work in oil-rich Kuwait and earn less than US$200 a month on average.

The Kuwaiti criminal court sentenced Pawa to die by hanging on April 14, 2008 for stabbing to death her employer's in the Al-Qurain district, south of Kuwait City.

Pawa reportedly stabbed the victim several times with a kitchen knife while she was asleep at dawn on May 14, 2007.

The court rejected the request by defense lawyers for Pawa to undergo psychiatric examination for the determination of her mental state. (Bernama)


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