RIYADH, 25 August 2007 — The Court of Grievances fined a woman SR1,000 and gave her a one-year deferred jail sentence for falsely claiming to have a post-graduate degree in nutrition, according to a report in Al-Eqtisadiah newspaper.
The woman reportedly claimed to have a master’s degree from Al-Mansoura University in Egypt. The rector of the school provided testimony that confirmed that the woman had only a bachelor’s degree.
The woman said she paid an Egyptian recruiter 30,000 Egyptian pounds to facilitate a teaching job in a Saudi college. The job required a master’s degree. The woman said the recruiter provided her with the forged certificate. The report didn’t say how the college became suspicious of the woman’s educational background.
The one-year sentence was deferred because the woman is a mother of three children and there were concerns about what would happen to the children if she were imprisoned.
A leading Saudi lawyer, Abdullah Al-Moharib, said the punishment was not commensurate with the enormity of the crime. He said that the current law, which stipulates a SR1,000 fine for possessing forged documents, needs to be revised because the punishment was laid down several decades ago when SR1,000 was considered a huge sum.
In the past couple of months more than 70 fake certificates have been discovered. Holders of post-graduate degrees can acquire jobs as lecturers drawing salaries of up to SR10,000 a month.
