JEDDAH, 26 October 2003 — A Saudi teenager has filed a suit against his father at a summary court here for allegedly chaining him by the neck, beating him with an iron bar, breaking his leg and locking him up in a workshop.
The court has asked the father to report for a hearing in the middle of Ramadan, Okaz reported yesterday. The daily said the father was not available for comment.
“The problem with my father started about 15 years ago when he divorced my mother,” the 18-year-old son told the daily. The father later married another woman and has four children by his second wife.
The teenager said he had suffered torture and humiliation from his father and his new wife. “They would go out for a picnic with their four children and leave me chained at home,” he said.
He also charged that his father had broken his leg by beating him with an iron bar. Later the father took him to hospital but warned him to tell no one how he was injured.
“My father threw me and my brother (from the same mother) into his workshop and opened an account for us at a nearby tea stall (boufia) for our food. He also took away our IDs so we wouldn’t run away,” he said.
The teenager later contacted an aunt in Taif, who asked her son to take him to the summer resort, where he later had two operations at King Abdul Aziz Hospital.
The boy’s uncle said he had tried to mediate between the boy and his father but the father would have none of it.
