MANAMA: A four-year-old boy is waiting to be named his dead Bahraini father’s son, as authorities here lack the apparatus to carry out paternity tests on dead bodies, said the boy’s lawyer Abdulla Al-Shamlawi.
“Bahraini authorities do not have devices to carry out DNA tests on dead people,” said the lawyer, speaking after a judge ordered the man’s body to be exhumed.
The man apparently took a second wife in 2004 without informing his first wife and children, and without registering the marriage, said Al-Shamlawi. He added that when he died in 2006, the second wife was pregnant with a child. The Higher Shariah Directorate chaired by Judge Sheikh Nasser Al-Asfoor had announced the verdict for exhumation in June. The case was, however, adjourned after authorities reportedly failed to submit the report because of a lack of apparatus to conduct DNA tests on dead bodies. Al-Shamlawi said the dead man’s family from his first wife objected to the exhumation saying it is disrespectful to the dead.
Al-Shamlawi said he is fighting for the second wife and her child to be accepted as members of the family. “If the tests are positive, then the family has to accept the child and give him the family name. In that case, the child is part of their family and they cannot neglect him or any of his rights,” he added.
