KOCHI: A campaign in her native Kerala to free nurse Nimisha Priya from Yemen’s death row was thwarted Monday when President Rashad Muhammed al-Alimi accepted her murder sentence. Nimisha, from Palakkad, was convicted of murdering a Yemeni citizen, Talal Abdo Mahdi, in 2018 and has been imprisoned in Yemen’s capital jail ever since.
The prosecution established that Nimisha murdered Mahadi, with whom she had founded a health center in Sana’a and later married in July 2017. She dismembered her husband’s body and threw the parts in a tank. The motivation was purportedly retaliation for the torture Mahadi allegedly put her to. He also confiscated her passport, Nimisha told the court.
Because President al-Alimi’s consent could result in the execution of her death sentence within a month, the Save Nimisha Priya Action Council and her family members want to speed up negotiations with the victim’s family and tribal leaders. Nimisha’s mother is in Sana’a to negotiate blood money payments to the victim’s relatives.
