Two transgender Pakistanis 'are packed into sacks and thrashed to death with STICKS' by police in Saudi Arabia
• The two people, identified as Amna, 35, and Meeno, 26, died in police custody
• Both from Pakistan, they were arrested in Riyadh for cross-dressing in public
• It is a punishable offence in Saudi Arabia for any man to imitate a woman
• Police officers raided a guest house and arrested 35 people, 22 are still in prison
By Gareth Davies For Mailonline
1 March 2017
Two transgender Pakistanis were reportedly packed into sacks and thrashed to death with sticks by police in Saudi Arabia.
The pair from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, Pakistan, were arrested in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for cross-dressing in public.
It
is a punishable offence in the kingdom for a man to imitate a woman and
officers arrested 35 people in a raid on a guest house.
Police recovered women's clothing and jewellery and took those arrested into custody.
It
was here that Amna, 35, and Meeno, 26, are said to have been beaten to
death while under police surveillance in prison.
Colonel
Fawaz bin Jameel al-Maiman, the police’s media spokesperson in Riyadh,
told The Tribune: 'The majority of the arrested are from
Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the others from other cities of Pakistan.'
A
transgender rights activist said only 11 of the 35 had been released
after paying a fine of 150,000 riyals, meaning 22 are still in custody.
Qamar Naseem said: 'Torturing humans after throwing them into bags and beating them with sticks is inhumane.'
While 11 were released later after paying a fine of 150,000 riyals (£32,000), 22 are still in police custody, Naseem added.
'The suffering ended for these two after being physically tortured, however, the rest are still languishing in Saudi jails.
'No one is there to save them as the life of a transgender is not of any value to anyone, not even for our own government.'