bbcRelatives of an Indian nurse sentenced to death in war-torn Yemen say they are pinning their hopes on a last-ditch effort to save her.
Nimisha Priya, 34, was sentenced to death for the murder of a local man, his former business partner Talal Abdo Mahdi, whose dismembered body was discovered in a water tank in 2017.
Housed in the central prison of the capital, Sana’a, she will be executed soon; Mahdi al-Mashat, president of the Supreme Political Council of the Houthi rebels, approved his punishment this week.
Under the Islamic judicial system, known as Sharia, the only way to stop the execution now is to obtain forgiveness from the victim’s family. For months, Nimisha’s relatives and supporters have been trying to achieve this by raising diyah, or blood money, to pay Mahdi’s family, and negotiations have continued.
But with time running out, supporters say their hopes depend entirely on the family’s decision.
With presidential sanction on the way, prosecutors will once again seek the consent of Mahdi’s family and ask if they have any objections to the execution, said Samuel Jerome, a Yemen-based social worker who has power of attorney on Nimisha’s behalf. mother.
“If they say they don’t want to or can’t forgive her, the sentence will be suspended immediately,” he said.
“Forgiveness is the first step. Only after that comes the family accepting blood money.”
Under Yemeni law, Nimisha’s family cannot contact the victim’s family directly and must hire negotiators.
Subhash Chandran, a lawyer who has represented Nimisha’s family in India in the past, told the BBC that the family had already crowdfunded $40,000 (£32,268) for the victim’s family. The money was delivered in two tranches to lawyers hired by the Indian government to negotiate the case (a delay in sending the second tranche affected negotiations, Jerome says).
“We now need to explore the extent of discussions with the (victim’s) family, which is only possible with the support of the Indian government,” Chandran said.
India’s Ministry of External Affairs has said they are aware of Nimisha’s situation and are providing all possible help to the family.
His family is anxious but also hopeful.
“Nimisha has no knowledge of what happens beyond the prison doors,” said her husband Tony Thomas, who spoke to her hours before the death sentence was passed. “All he wants to know is if our daughter is okay.”
Nimisha’s mother is currently in Sanaa, where she traveled last year after a trial in India. permitted to go to the region controlled by the Houthi rebels. Since then, he has met his daughter twice in prison.
The first reunion was very emotional. “Nimisha saw me… she said I had become weak and asked me to have courage and that God would save her. She asked me not to be sad,” her mother, Prema Kumari, told the BBC.
The second time, Mrs. Kumari was accompanied by two nuns who prayed for her daughter in prison.
Nimisha was just 19 years old when she traveled to Yemen.
The daughter of a low-paid domestic worker, she wanted to change her family’s economic situation and worked for a few years as a nurse in a public hospital in Sanaa.
In 2011, she returned home to the southern Indian city of Kochi and married Mr. Thomas, a tuk-tuk driver.
The couple moved to Yemen together shortly after. But financial difficulties forced Mr. Thomas to return to India with his young daughter.
Tired of low-paid hospital jobs, Nimisha decided to open her own clinic in Yemen.
As the law required him to have a local partner, he opened the clinic together with Mahdi, a shop owner.
At first the two got along well: when Nimisha briefly visited India for her daughter’s baptism, Mahdi accompanied her.
“He seemed like a good man when he came to our house,” Thomas told the BBC.
But Mahdi’s attitude, Thomas said, “suddenly changed” when Yemen’s civil war broke out in 2014.
At the time, Nimisha was trying to finalize paperwork so her husband and daughter could join her again.
But after the war broke out, the Indian government banned all travel to Yemen, making it impossible for them to go to be with her.
In the following days, thousands of Indians were evacuated from the country, but Nimisha decided to stay, as she had taken out huge loans to open her clinic.
fake imagesThat’s when Nimisha began complaining about Mahdi’s behavior, including accusations of physical torture, Thomas said.
A petition to the court, filed by a group called Save Nimisha Priya International Action Council, alleged that Mahdi took all her money, confiscated her passport and even threatened her with a gun.
After Mahdi’s body was discovered in 2017, police accused Nimisha of killing him by giving him an “overdose of sedatives” and allegedly dismembering his body.
Nimisha denied the allegations. In court, his lawyer argued that he had tried to anesthetize Mahdi just to get his passport back, but that the dose had been accidentally increased.
In 2020, a local court sentenced Nimisha to death. Three years later, in 2023, his family challenged the decision before Yemen’s Supreme Court, but their appeal was rejected.
Even with so many twists and turns, the family is not willing to give up hope.
“My heart says we can make a deal and save Nimisha’s life,” Thomas said.
More than anything, he said he was worried about his daughter, now 13, who had “never experienced a mother’s love.”
“They talk on the phone every week and my daughter gets upset if she misses the call,” Thomas said.
“She needs her mother. What will she do without her?”
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