MANILA, Philippines—Good news for 79 overseas Filipino workers serving prison terms for petty crimes in Saudi Arabia: King Abdullah has granted a royal pardon to all jailed “petty criminals” in the Middle East kingdom.
The migrant workers are eager to get their names included in the applications for pardon to be filed by the Philippine embassy in Saudi, said John Leonard Monterona, regional coordinator of the the Riyadh-based migrant workers group Migrante.
The OFWs are “languishing at the Malaz Central Jail in Riyadh for petty crimes such as illegal possession of liquor, gambling and violating other culture-related laws of the host country,” Monterona said Tuesday in an e-mail to the Inquirer.
There are more or less 3,000 jailed OFWs in Saudi Arabia, according to Monterona. He said one problem was that the Philippine embassy did not seem to have a complete list of OFWs in jail.
Meanwhile, relatives of a Filipino tennis instructor imprisoned in nearby Kuwait for over 14 years, appealed to the DFA and the Overseas Worders Welfare Administration for help in raising 5,000 Kuwaiti dinar (nearly P1 million) in “tanasol (or blood money)” that would hopefully facilitate his release from jail.
Joseph Urbiztondo of Bacoor, Cavite, was meted a life sentence by a Kuwaiti court for accidentally killing his Bangladeshi apprentice, who had allegedly sexually harassed him. Jerry E. Esplanada
