360 Lashes in Saudi for OAP

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Cultral relativism belongs in the bin. How is giving a guy in his 70s 360 lashes both just and fair in any sense of those words?

What this is is exactly as min said, a double standard whereby foreigners in Saudi are convicted with overly harsh sentences for minor transgressions which are routinely committed by Saudis. Forget carrying a bottle of wine, what about countless murders and rapes committed against de facto slave labour by Saudis both home and abroad?

It's utter nonsense and needs to be confronted.

The verdict seems solid. 
There is a case to commute the sentence and protest the barbarity of it (as with all forms of capital and corporal punishment) but the guy knew full well what he was risking the moment he picked up the bottle.
Trying to claim he didn't commit a crime is inane.

The point was that the cultural relativism of the 'crime' is equally insane as the punishment for the crime itself (hence the argument belonging in the bin). It should not be a crime, and even if we bracket out that, the punishment is ridiculous. Saudi's ultra-conservative Wahhabi Sharia law is OTT to the extreme, and no amount of pandering to 'it's their culture' is going to convince me otherwise. The guy should not be in prison and certainly should not be facing lashes (which I believe has since been rescinded though I am not 100% sure). This further brackets out the fact that SA's interpretation and enforcement of these punishments is also hypocritical and xenophobic. Natives could be guilty of comitting the exact same 'crime' and get off without so much as a notice from the Saudi religious police. If you're anything other than a native then expect the harshest of punishments.

Nobody insinuated that it wasn't a crime in Saudi. What is being argued is that it shouldn't be a crime at all. In that respect, it is indeed not a crime.