It was recently reported by various local and Arab media outlets that three Kuwaiti citizens were executed, along with several residents. The surprise was that the execution of a woman convicted of killing her friend was stopped just two hours before she was due to die on the gallows, because the victim’s family accepted a sum of money from the killer’s family, or what is known in common parlance as a ‘blood money paid to avenger’!
There is no justice in life. People do not come into this world equal, but are separated by their color, family backgrounds, homeland, language, degree of wealth, and other things.
However, it is the responsibility of a “distinguished minority” in society to mitigate these differences between people and build bridges between them to limit their negative effects.
For example, is it not fair to pardon a prisoner before the end of his sentence because he memorized the Quran, while we don’t pardon those who failed to memorize? The first may be a vile wicked person, and the second may be peaceful and good, so we reward the evil one, who had a strong memory, and release him to continue committing his evil deeds, while we keep the good one in prison only because he did not have the same strong memory as the first.
We see the same thing in the issue of blood money for the murdered, which is a strange “innovation” that advanced societies do not know! If there is a large clan or tribe behind him that will pay his blood money, or a wealthy family behind him that will pay the family of the victim his blood money, then he will commit many evils, and he will be free, despite the severity of his crime, because there are those who were frightened or will be frightened for him, and will pay his blood money, and whoever has no supporter or money will be hanged, even if the circumstances of his crime are questionable!
There is no such thing in Kuwaiti law, in all its branches, as the blood money heirs waive the right to a murderer convicted of a death sentence, which leads to the suspension of the execution of the sentence. Even if it exists in another system, it is completely in conflict with the “principle of the civil state,” the idea of public law, the goal of deterrence, preventing the occurrence of crimes, and combating them!
The issue of blood money is shameful and devoid of justice, and it must be stopped. There are few precedents for it, and circumstances, for certain reasons, were lenient with it. However, this is no justification for the continuation of this situation, for which there is no text in the country’s civil law that permits it.
In this regard, Professor Lawyer “Imad Al-Saif” says in a tweet, with some modifications; Kuwait is a civil constitutional state, which only takes a small amount of Sharia rules, and there is nothing in its legal system called “the waiver of the blood guardian,” and linking this waiver to the issuance of decrees ... or anything else.
If I had been the one who had convicted that woman and pardoned her for a sum of money, it would have made me feel sad and like I had wasted my effort.
e-mail: [email protected]
Ahmed Al Sarraf
