Washington: The US State Department has voiced its "astonishment" at the sentencing of a Saudi victim of rape to 200 lashes and six months in jail but stopped short of calling for it to be changed.

"I think when you look at the crime and the fact that now the victim is punished, I think that causes a fair degree of surprise and astonishment," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters here yesterday.

"But it is within the power of the Saudi government to take a look at the verdict and change it," he said, referring to the case of the 19-year-old woman whose punishment was ordered by a court Wednesday after the woman was gang-raped.

Asked if the US government was reluctant to condemn an important Arab ally ahead of a conference aimed at reviving Palestinian-Israeli peace talks, he replied: "No, that s not it at all.

"You have a situation that I think most individuals, for example, in our country, just don't understand. We don t understand how something like this could happen.
"That said, these kinds of decisions are going to have to be decisions that the people of that country -- in this case, Saudi Arabia -- are going to have to take for themselves," he said.

Fran Townsend, President George W Bush's adviser on domestic security and anti-terrorism, said on CNN television: "The case is absolutely reprehensible."
But she declined to condemn the Saudi government, whom she praised for cooperation in fighting terror groups.
"What I ve praised the Saudis for is their counterterrorism cooperation, where it is unprecedented, and we share information that s helped us stop attacks.

Source : PTI