Kuwait Policeman Death Penalty Upheld for Raping Filipina

Kuwait's appeals court on Wednesday upheld the death sentence of a policeman for "abducting, raping and attempting to murder" a Filipina woman.

The lower court condemned the policeman, identified only by the initials Y.M, to death last June. He can still challenge the ruling before the supreme court.

The policeman had arrested the woman after finding that her residence permit had expired, according to the court papers.

He took her to a deserted area where he stabbed her in the neck and raped her after she refused to have sex with him.

The policeman left her for dead in a pool of blood, but returned and stabbed her several more times when she moved.

The Filipina survived and crawled to a nearby road where a passerby took her to hospital.

About 180,000 Filipinos, many of them women employed as domestic helpers, work and live in oil-rich Kuwait, making up the fourth largest foreign community in the Gulf emirate.