Underscoring the precarious plight of foreign workers in Saudi Arabia, the Saudi government Wednesday (Jan. 8) executed a young Sri Lankan housemaid convicted of killing an infant in her care, following what human rights groups have called a flawed trial.

Despite high-level clemency pleas from the Sri Lankan government, Rizana Nafeek, who was 17 at the time of the baby boy’s death in 2005, was executed in Dawadmi, a small town outside Riyadh where she’d been incarcerated for several years, according to a statement by the Saudi Interior Ministry. Saudi executions are usually by beheading.

“We are very sad,” said Azhari Babakar, an employee in the Riyadh law firm that handled her appeals and that until now had been seeking to have Nafeek’s death sentence commuted. Reached by phone, he confirmed Nafeek’s execution.

Nafeek was found guilty of murder by a Saudi court following a 2007 trial at which she had no lawyer or interpreter. Her conviction rested on a confession she purportedly made to police through an interpreter who was not Sri Lankan. His competence to speak Nafeek’s native language of Tamil was never legally established and he later disappeared, according to the Saudi attorney hired to appeal Nafeek’s conviction.