Saudi Court Sentences Kenyan Worker to 100 Lashes and Banishment

The October ruling was issued by a three-judge panel at a criminal court in Riyadh after hearings last summer, the New York Times said, citing court documents. It is unclear when the lashes will be carried out.

Muthoni, a mother of five, has been trying for more than a year to return to Kenya with her 1-year-old son, Abudy.

“I am so afraid,” she told the newspaper in a phone interview last month. “I don’t think I can endure those lashes.”

“I don’t deserve this,” she said in a more recent interview.

The judges found her guilty of having had sex outside marriage, relying on an orthodox interpretation of Islamic law that prescribes 100 lashes based on a verse in the Quran. The judgment does not indicate that the authorities pursued the child’s father, an Egyptian resident of the kingdom named Mohamud, who Muthoni told police had left the country. Court documents did not include a surname.

Court Proceeds Without a Lawyer

Muthoni said she was given a court translator but not a lawyer. The documents reviewed by the Times appeared to confirm that account, showing no evidence of legal representation.

Indigent defendants in Saudi criminal cases are entitled to state-sponsored lawyers. In practice, trials often proceed without them, even in some capital cases, according to experts cited by the newspaper.

Without a lawyer, Muthoni did not appeal. “It is the only way that can take me back home to my children,” she said.

Under Saudi law, the Times reported, women are seated and clothed while they are lashed across the body with a bamboo stick.

The court also imposed a year of banishment. If a judgment does not specify a destination, the person is generally sent to another Saudi city. Courts can review such sentences when women have no male relatives to accompany them. It is not clear whether that penalty will mean deportation to Kenya.

Pregnancy Traps Kenyan Workers in the Kingdom

Muthoni had been working legally as a housekeeper through Maharah Human Resources, a Saudi firm, when she became pregnant during a brief relationship. She gave birth in August 2025 in staff housing. After a supervisor discovered her and the newborn and took them to a hospital, police officers detained her for questioning about the pregnancy.

She was released, then turned away from staff housing and a shelter, and received no help at the time from the Kenyan Embassy, the Times said. She ended up living at a gas station that had become a gathering place for migrant mothers, many of whom hoped to be deported with their children.

After the newspaper published an investigation last year into unmarried migrant mothers stranded in the kingdom, Maharah provided lodging and the Kenyan Embassy issued documents permitting her to leave. She still could not depart while the case was pending. Those exit documents have since expired, the Times reported, leaving it unclear whether or how she and her son will be allowed to return.

The Saudi and Kenyan governments did not respond to the newspaper’s requests for comment, nor did representatives for Maharah. Kenya’s foreign ministry has not issued a public statement specifically addressing the sentence.

The Times reported that children of unwed mothers in Saudi Arabia are routinely denied birth certificates, blocking access to medical care, education, and departure. Kenyan diplomats who could issue those documents and help mothers go home instead frequently ignore them, insult them, and solicit bribes or sex, the investigation found. The newspaper also said the labor pipeline is one from which top Kenyan government officials profit.

A separate Times investigation in March 2025 found that at least 274 Kenyan workers, mostly women, had died in Saudi Arabia over five years, including at least 55 in 2024, with reports of rapes and beatings common.

Muthoni is one of thousands of East African women recruited as housekeepers and nannies in the kingdom. Other Kenyans stranded abroad have also pressed Nairobi for help, including a lawyer group seeking the repatriation of citizens trapped in Cambodia.

Flogging Survives a Reform Loophole

Sex outside marriage and unwed pregnancy sit in a legal gray area in Saudi Arabia, which has no written penal code and leaves judges to interpret Islamic law case by case. The Times interviewed many unmarried mothers last year who said they faced no repercussions. It is unclear why Muthoni was prosecuted. Her case was already under way before that investigation was published.

In 2020, the government announced significant curbs on lashing, and state media called the move a “landmark decision.” Saudi and international outlets gave the impression that flogging had been abolished. The decision left a loophole for cases in which Islamic law prescribes flogging, including for sex outside marriage. Because judgments for morality crimes are not regularly published, it is impossible to say how often lashing is still ordered, the Times said.

Years of government efforts to draft a penal code appear to have stalled.

“This sentence of flogging does not align with international human rights standards,” said Ekaterina Porras Sivolobova, a labor migration analyst and founder of the nonprofit Do Bold, who has worked with stranded East African mothers across the Gulf. “It strips a mother of her dignity and does the opposite of protecting vulnerable women. It targets them.”

The sentence comes as rights groups continue to criticize the kingdom’s justice system, after Saudi Arabia set a new execution record in 2025 and executed a man for crimes committed at age 15.