A young maid is facing death by beheading in Saudi Arabia for a crime she claims she did not commit

Rizana Nafeek, who says that she was a teenager at the time of the incident, was arrested in May 2005 on charges of murdering a four-month-old baby who was in her care. The Sri-Lankan born maid denies murder and claims that she desperately tried to save the child, who choked while she was looking after it. The news comes just days after Indonesia announced that it would ban women from traveling to the kingdom for domestic work after another maid was beheaded there. Saudi Arabia has come under fire from human rights groups for the handling of Nafeek's case after it was revealed that there had been a mix-up involving the year she was born in. The authorities have her date of birth as 1982 however her birth certificate states that she was born in 1988 - making her 17 at the time of the incident. If Saudi Arabia went ahead with the execution it would be in breach of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which it has ratified. Human rights groups claim that Nafeek had no legal representation before or during her trial. Saudi Arabia is a dangerous place for many foreign domestic workers. There are an estimated 1.5 million foreign servants working in households in the oil-rich kingdom. In 2008, Human Rights Watch documented widespread abuse of Asian maids. As well as frequently suffering wretched working conditions, many women were routinely subjected to emotional, sexual and physical abuse, campaigners reported. Recently, Indonesia banned its citizens from working in the oil-rich country after another maid was beheaded for murder. Ruyati binti Sapub, 54, was executed after she confessed to killing her employer with a meat cleaver because of constant abuse.