JEDDAH, 15 February 2007 — The appeals court decision over a controversial divorce case in which a father is disputing his 27-year-old daughter’s marriage has been postponed until next week.
A judge had annulled the marriage of Rania Albou-Enin to Saud Al-Khaledi, after the woman’s father complained that she had eloped with the 30-year-old engineer and got married in Bahrain without his permission a year ago.
Albou-Enin claims that her father physically abused her and refused to give permission for her to marry because he would lose access to her SR10,000 a month physician’s salary.
The couple has been sentenced to two months in prison and 100 lashes for marrying without permission from the woman’s legal guardian. Since their marriage, Albou-Enin got pregnant with her first child.
Al-Khaledi is in his fifth month in prison and Albou-Enin is in hiding. “The appeals court postponement is actually a good sign,” said the couple’s lawyer Ibrahm Al-Bahri. “This is in our favor.”
Al-Khaledi was transferred on Tuesday from a detention center in Alkhobar to one in Dammam, where he’s from, the lawyer told Arab News yesterday. Al-Bahri pointed out that case against a person must be filed in his or her city of residence and he said that he was surprised that it took five months for the authorities to realize that the trial should be taking place in Dammam, not Alkhobar, where the original hearing in the case brought on by the father took place last year.
The father was angered by Dammam court Judge Mohammed Al-Suleiman’s attempt to reconcile the feuding sides. He managed to get the trial location changed after complaining about the judge to the Interior Ministry.
The case was then transferred to Judge Omar Al-Tuwaijri in an Alkhobar court. In an ironic twist, Al-Tuwaijri was the judge that Rania approached six months prior to her marriage to Al-Khaledi, complaining that her father was preventing her from getting married. Her lawsuit against her father couldn’t continue because he refused to appear at the court and the judge didn’t compel him to show up. Arab News attempted to contact Al-Tuwaijri, but was told that he was on vacation this week.
Meanwhile, the Muslim Women Writers Alliance announced yesterday an international petition titled “Say No To Forced Divorce — Yes to Reform”. The petition is meant to for Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah and calls for an end to forced divorces and the need for reforms relating to women’s rights.
A group of Saudi women have also presented a petition to the king concerning three recent cases of forced divorce in the Kingdom, including this one.
