Kuwait couple get death penalty for murder of Filipina maid

KUWAIT CITY // A court has sentenced a Kuwaiti couple to death for beating and then murdering their Filipina domestic helper, newspapers in the Gulf state reported today.

The criminal court found the disabled husband and his wife guilty of "premeditated murder" after throwing the maid from their car and driving over her, Al Rai and Al Anbaa daily newspapers reported, citing the verdict.

No names were published in the reports, for the couple or the maid.

Newspapers said that based on testimony by one of the couple's sons, the wife beat the maid for days until her health deteriorated.

The son told interrogators that his parents had said they were taking the maid to hospital for treatment, but he never saw her again.

According to the ruling, the couple took the maid, who was "unconscious" at the time, to a remote area in the desert where they threw her from the back seat of the car and then drove over her until she died.

An estimated 73,000 Filipinos - 60,000 of them women working mostly as maids - live in Kuwait, where some 600,000 domestic helpers, mostly south-east Asians, are employed.