A Saudi appeals court is set to rule within days in the case of a couple forced to divorce against their will because of arcane tribal custom, a lawyer said on Tuesday.
A 32-year-old Saudi woman, called Fatima, has been in prison for more than three months after she refused to return to her half-brothers' home when a court last year annulled her marriage to Mansour al-Timani, 36. Custom in the conservative kingdom requires women to live with their families until marriage.
"We are waiting for the Court of Cassation to rule within days, less than a week," Abdul-Rahman Al-Lahem told Reuters. "The first verdict shocked society so there is great sympathy for the couple." Fatima's brothers began the legal action last year saying Timani was not of good enough tribal stock to marry their sister and had lied to them when the couple first married.
Judges agreed with them, relying on the opinion of deceased religious scholars, Lahem said. Saudi Arabia rules by an austere school of Islamic law often termed Wahhabism, and judges in family courts are themselves religious scholars. Fatima, whose two children are also in jail with her, has vowed not to give up her marriage.
"I'm leaving this place on one condition only: that I go back to my husband," she was quoted saying in the Arab News on Tuesday, speaking from her cell in the Gulf oil city of Dammam.
Lahem declined to say what tribe Fatima was from, but he said her family's origins were in the conservative Najd area north of Riyadh, the country's tribal heartland. "In Islam there is not meant to be any discrimination in terms of colour, nationality or race. But the tribal element is still strong in Saudi Arabia," Lahem said. "It's well known here that there are two types of people - 'qabili' who are from known tribes and 'khadiri' who are not."
The issue was dramatised in a popular comedy show aired in October that ridiculed the idea of tribal superiority, and Timani broke down in tears during an interview on state television last week.