Jul 28, 2006 8:38 am US/Mountain
Woman To Be Sentenced In Virtual Slavery Case
By Jon Sarche, AP Writer
AURORA, Colo. (AP) ―
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Homaidan Al-Turki (file)
CBS4
A woman who pleaded guilty to a federal charge of harboring an illegal immigrant was scheduled to be sentenced Friday.
Attorneys for Sarah Khonaizan, 35, have said she faces a sentence ranging from probation to a year in prison and a fine up to $20,000. In exchange for her guilty plea May 9, prosecutors dropped charges of forced labor and document servitude.
She also has pleaded guilty in state district court in Arapahoe County to theft for failing to pay thousands of dollars in wages to a 24-year-old Indonesian woman who served as a nanny for her family for more than four years in Colorado and in Saudi Arabia.
Khonaizan's attorney, Forrest Lewis, said his client would not fight any deportation order and plans to voluntarily return to Saudi Arabia after completing her state and federal sentences.
Prosecutors and FBI agents accused Khonaizan and her husband, Homaidan Al-Turki, both Saudi citizens, of hiding the woman's passport and forcing her to cook, clean and care for their five children in their suburban Aurora home.
She slept on a mattress on the basement floor and was paid less than $2 a day, an FBI affidavit said.
State prosecutors also alleged that Al-Turki sexually abused the woman repeatedly. The Associated Press is not identifying her because of the sexual assault allegations.
After deliberating about seven hours, a state jury on June 30 found Al-Turki guilty of 12 counts of unlawful sexual contact by use of force, threats or intimidation; false imprisonment; conspiracy to commit false imprisonment; criminal extortion and theft. He faces 8 years to life in prison for each of the sexual contact counts when he is sentenced Aug. 31.
Al-Turki also faces an October federal trial on charges of forced labor, document servitude and harboring an illegal immigrant. In April, Al-Turki and Khonaizan agreed to pay the nanny about $64,000 in wages to settle a Labor Department lawsuit.
Al-Turki, a linguist, worked at a Denver publishing and translating company and was a doctoral candidate at the University of Colorado.
(© 2006 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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