Saudi Arabia

Over four years after a judge in Jouf annulled the marriage of Fatima and Mansour at the behest of Fatima’s half brothers, the Supreme Judiciary Council in Riyadh on Saturday overruled the decision and ordered that the couple be reunited in matrimony. “The divorce ruling is void, therefore the return of the couple together is inevitable now and does not require (another) marriage ceremony,” Ahmad Al-Sudairi, who has been providing the couple pro bono representation, told Arab News. Fatima was pregnant with the couple’s second child when on June 20, 2005 a judge ruled in favor of Fatima’s half brothers and divorced her from Mansour Al-Timani in absentia.

 عنيزة، تحقيق–عبدالرحمن البقمي، بدر العتيبي.  فصول مثيرة وأحداث جديدة خرجت على السطح لتكشف للقارئ الكثير من الغموض حول "طفلة بريدة" البالغة من العمر 12 عاماً؛ والتي زوجها والدها برجل ثمانيني. وفي هذا التحقيق نستكمل القضية مع جميع الأطراف (الزوج، ووالد الطفلة، ومأذون الأنكحة، والوكيل الشرعي عن الأم، الطفلة)، وذلك بعد أن التقينا سابقاً مع والدة الطفلة وتحدثت في حوار مطول عن معاناتها وطفلتها من هذا الزواج غير المتكافئ عمرياً.

I was sitting in a majlis with a group of women when our chat on world affairs was interrupted by an urgent knock on the door; a knock that opened more than just a passage into the rest of the house. “We ran out of coffee!” I heard a male voice in distress telling the hostess as she opened the door just a tiny crack to see who it was. It was her husband, who was hosting a similar majlis in another corner of the house, with the husbands of the women here. The hostess went out to help him, leaving the door wide open to a room full of annoyed women. Several of them ran to the door to close it, because “there are men in the house”.

The Hail Emirate has received official orders to implement the recent sentence handed down against the defendants in the case of Khamisa Sawadi, issued by members of the Committee to Promote Virtue and Prevent Vice in the City of Shamli (170 kilometers south of Hail), which was known in the media as 'The case of the elderly woman of Shamli'. Saudi sources have confirmed to Emirati newspaper, Gulf News, that the woman is still in her house and the sentence has not been carried out yet.