Kuwaiti woman who started fire that killed 57 women and children sentenced to death
A 23-year-old Kuwait woman was on Tuesday sentenced to death for causing a fire that killed 57 women and children attending a wedding party in a tent in Al Jahra, 45 kilometres west of Kuwait City.
Judges Adel Al Sagr, Ahmad Abu Al Amayem and Khalid Abdul Hadi said that Nasra Yusuf Mohammad Al Enezi was guilty of “premeditated fire” and “premeditated murder of the fire victims.”
The death sentence, if approved by the court of appeals and the supreme court, would be carried out by hanging.
Nasra, who was arrested on August 16, 2009, one day after the inferno, initially confessed that she had started the fire to exact revenge on her husband for taking a new wife and on her sisters-in-law for ruining her life. She said that her intention was not to kill, but to spoil the festivities in the tent set up near her husband’s family home.
She said that she took two taxis to reach the tent and that on the way she purchased a bottle of fuel from a petrol station.
However, she later retracted her confessions, and at the first hearing, she insisted that she was innocent and that she was at home when the fire broke out. Her earlier confessions were due to the initial shock she felt upon hearing the news on television, she said. Nasra later complained that she had been ill-treated at time and that she was pregnant when she was arrested and that she was forced to have an abortion.
According to police reports, up to 180 women and children were inside the tent when the fire started at around 9 pm and that the existence of only one exit had triggered a stampede. The police said that 41 women and children accompanying them were killed in a matter of minutes and that the other 16 victims died from injuries. Most of the women and children were stateless Arabs (Bedoon) and Saudis. The bride was not at the tent at the time of the fire. In keeping with the local tradition, the tent was only for women and children and the groom, who had two children from his marriage with Nasra, was with the men.
An Asian maid testified that she saw Nasra near the tent fleeting seconds before it was engulfed by the blaze. However calls by the police to the taxi driver to present his testimony have however failed to retrace Nasra’s movements prior to the fire.
The incident, the worst peace-time tragedy in Kuwait, shocked the northern Arabian Gulf state to the core and the Amir, Shaikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah ordered the toning down of Eid festivities, offered relatives compensation cash to the families of the victims and the provision of the best facilities to help cure the injured.
