http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=111702&d=11&m=7&y=2008
Friday 11 July 2008 (07 Rajab 1429)
'Sold' by her father, Rasha gets no help from court
Arab News -
TAIF: When Rasha registered for high school a few years ago, she
discovered that her estranged father had married her off without her knowledge
to a man in his 80s in exchange for a SR30,000 (about $8,000) dowry payment.
Now a court has denied her appeals to divorce the man.
"The officials at the girls education department discovered that my
file had no birth certificate except a temporary one from the hospital where I
was born," Rasha told Al-Riyadh daily in a report published yesterday.
"They asked me to bring my father's identity card or a printout
from the Civil Affairs Directorate. After searching through my papers, they
gave me the shock of my life when they told me that my father had married me to
an 85-year-old man when I was just 10 years old, and that I am his fourth wife."
Now the 18-year-old resident of Taif is appealing to the government
and the National Society for Human Rights to intervene after a local judge
declined to grant the divorce, even after a donor agreed to reimburse the dowry
money that the old man was demanding to terminate the marriage.
Rasha's father and mother split up before she was born, and her
grandmother raised her. She says she has never met her father or the man that
she was married to without her knowledge.
Islam forbids forced marriages. Though fathers must grant
permission for daughters to marry, they cannot force their daughters to marry
somebody of their choice. Furthermore, dowry is supposed to be paid to and left
under the control of the woman getting married.
Nevertheless, in Rasha's case the old man demanded a reimbursement
of the dowry. Furthermore, the girl learned that her geriatric husband has been
collecting social insurance payments since she was 10 after she was placed on
his family ID card.
Officials at the Civil Affairs Directorate, which is under the
Interior Ministry and in charge of registering the civil status of Saudi
citizens, told Rasha to file a suit against her father and the old man in
court. The court ordered her to take out newspaper advertisements to find the
old man. A tip from somebody who read the announcement led to the discovery
that the old man is demanding a refund of the dowry.
"I waited for a year looking for someone who would pay me this
amount until Princess Jawhara bint Abdul Aziz took the initiative and donated
the entire amount. When I took the money to the judge to complete my divorce
procedures, he said the case was closed," Rasha said.
Shut out of the legal system, Rasha is now appealing to the
government and human rights activists to help her out of this predicament.
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