JEDDAH, 25 August 2007 — The recent torture death of a seven-year-old girl has kicked up a debate over the way the custody of the girl was handled by different courts.

Arij died about two weeks ago while under the care of her father who had successfully won a court order granting him the child’s custody.

However, the daily Al-Madinah reported that this court order ran in direct contradiction to an earlier court order that granted custody not to the father or the mother but to the paternal grandfather.

Legal experts are now wondering how two courts can give different rulings. Only an appeal to a cassation court should have resulted in a different ruling, but in this case the father merely went to a different judge to contradict an earlier ruling.

Abdul Mohsen Al-Obaikan, legal consultant at the Ministry of Justice and member of the Shoura Council, said he did not have the details of the case, but pointed out that a court cannot give a ruling on the verdict of another court in the same category.

Obaikan said the mother could be denied custody rights of a girl if only she was found to be legally unfit to take the responsibility.

Saleh Al-Lehaidan, a legal consultant, said that in the light of Shariah the custody primarily goes to the father in the event of a divorce. However, he found inconsistency in the second ruling in the case. “The law does not allow a court to throw out the decision of another court in the same category,” said Al-Lehaidan.

According to police, after murdering the girl, the father locked her in a room in the house with the key and called Civil Defense to say his daughter had locked herself inside the room.

Police said the father later admitted to the crime and blamed it on psychological stress. The stepmother is also being charged as an accomplice in the murder.

Reports of domestic abuse involving stepmothers are common in the Arabic press. The mother of a girl named Rimas who is recuperating in a local hospital after allegedly being assaulted by her stepmother and father said she would fight to win custody of the child, Al-Madinah daily reported on Thursday.