US resident in Saudi gets 5 years in jail for killing Sri Lankan wife

A US resident in Saudi Arabia, convicted of killing his Sri Lankan wife, has been sentenced to five years in jail, Arab News reported.

He is said to have hidden her body for eight months in a tube inside a pipe designed to detect gas in the Al-Kharj desert.

Labourers at one of the major oil companies found the decomposed body inside the pipe located in their work area. That area is supervised by a US agent, married to a Sri Lankan woman, who had disappeared.

The workers immediately reported the matter to the supervisor who was supposed to report it to the company’s officials. But he was late in reporting the body for two hours, something that prompted the Police to investigate the matter. The body turned out to be his wife’s.

One of the workers said the supervisor asked him to burn or bury the body, but he refused and asked him to inform the Police.

Another labourer told investigators that he had been asked to weld the pipe and then throw it in a well.

The convict acknowledged that the body was his wife’s, but denied accusations in the workers’ testimonies.

The sons of the woman from a previous marriage rejected the verdict, demanding execution of the murderer.

They said, based on the witnesses’ testimony and the evidence, it looked like a deliberate murder.