Public-Sharia-Flogging for drinking alcohol. |
Christian Martinez, 32, was held down and beaten 40 times
with an electrical cord in his Silverwater home in July 2011, leaving him
bloodied and scarred.
In his judgment, Mr Maloney said assaults committed as part
of a religion that involved "mortification of the flesh" had never
been before a court in any common-law country - until now.
Mr Martinez converted to Islam three years before the
incident and fell under the wing of Wasim Fayad, 44, who he saw as his
"spiritual leader" and referred to as Brother Fadi. The electrician
had called Fayad and told him he wanted to make a fresh start after an
all-night bender drinking and taking drugs at Ivy nightclub.
His mentor and three other men, Zakaryah Raad, 21, Tolga
Cifki, 21, and Gengiz Coskin, 22, came to his house and he was then pinned to
his bed as Fayad repeatedly lashed him with the cord.
Back of the victim a week after Sharia-flogging. |
Yesterday Mr Maloney said the victim had withdrawn his
consent while the beating was taking place and any permission he had given was
uninformed, and also invalid as a matter of public policy.
He said the courts were right to consider "moral
standards" when it came to a consent - likening the case to when serious
injuries occurred in a sado-masochistic "sexual frenzy" or a street
brawl.
"Surely such
incidents should not be tolerated by the courts (and) the common law provides
the best deterrent against them," he said.
Mr Martinez said he
consented to only three lashes, begging the men to stop as he cried in pain. He
said one of the men read from the Koran that he should get 80 lashes for
drinking alcohol, but Fayad agreed they would give him only 40. He was told
Allah had "cleansed" the "impurity" from his body as he
repeatedly vomited during pauses in the whipping.
Mr Maloney noted Fayad was not a recognised religious teacher and his sharia law-inspired punishment had been rejected by Islamic community leaders.
Zakaryah Raad the Sharia Enforcer. |
(Maximum allowable
sentence I guess is 10 years in jail. IMHO the sentencing court should impose the
maximum sentence to let those four Islamists rot in jail for a
while. We do not need them Sharia Enforcers roaming free in a law-abiding
society like ours. Otherwise they will soon be beheading the non-believer Infidels like us Buddhists, Christians, and Jews. Horrible, our Australia is rapidly turning into a Sharia-enforced Islamic country!)
(Brutal flogging of a young Sudanese woman for wearing trousers in public.)
Sharia-flogging victim Christian Martinez. |