Saudi court rejects divorcing eight-year-old girl

**Honey** · December 21st, 2008, 09:17 PM

A Saudi court has rejected a plea to divorce an eight-year-old girl married off by her father to a man who is 58, saying the case should wait until the girl reaches puberty, a lawyer involved told AFP.
"The judge has dismissed the plea (filed by the mother) because she does not have the right to file such a case, and ordered that the plea should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty," lawyer Abdullah Jtili told AFP in a telephone interview after Saturday's court decision.
The divorce plea was filed in August by the girl's divorced mother with a court at Unayzah, 220 kilometres (135 miles) north of Riyadh just after the marriage contract was signed by the father and the groom.
"She doesn't know yet that she has been married," Jtili said then of the girl who was about to begin her fourth year at primary school.
Relatives who did not wish to be named told AFP that the marriage had not yet been consummated, and that the girl continued to live with her mother. They said that the father had set a verbal condition by which the marriage is not consummated for another 10 years, when the girl turns 18.
The father had agreed to marry off his daughter for an advance dowry of 30,000 riyals (8,000 dollars), as he was apparently facing financial problems, they said.
The father was in court and he remained adamant in favour of the marriage, they added.
Lawyer Jtili said he was going to appeal the verdict at the court of cassation, the supreme court in the ultra-conservative kingdom which applies Islamic Sharia law in its courts.
Arranged marriages involving pre-adolescents are occasionally reported in the Arabian Peninsula, including in Saudi Arabia where the strict conservative Wahabi version of Sunni Islam holds sway and polygamy is common.
In Yemen in April, another girl aged eight was granted a divorce after her unemployed father forced her to marry a man of 28.

AFP: Saudi court rejects divorcing eight-year-old girl

**McJag** · December 21st, 2008, 09:20 PM

This is just so sick!

**Laxmobster** · December 22nd, 2008, 12:11 PM

His child was worth $8,000 to him...so ridiculous!

So the courts granted her parents a divorce, yet they won't let her...

**AliceInWonderland** · December 22nd, 2008, 12:44 PM

sick sick sicks and these ppl are our "friends"

and donors apparantly, right bill clinton.

**Charmed Hour** · December 22nd, 2008, 01:14 PM

Originally Posted by Honey

"The judge has dismissed the plea (filed by the mother) because she does not have the right to file such a case, and ordered that the plea should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty," lawyer Abdullah Jtili told AFP in a telephone interview after Saturday's court

Ass backwards country! Her mother has no "right" to file suit. Yet, the little girl can when she reachers puberty? I'm calling bullshit on that one. They'll find some other reason why her suit is invalid.

And I'm sure Mr. Perv-O is going to wait another 10 years to sleep with his child bride.

**Quazar** · December 22nd, 2008, 03:58 PM

With any luck - the groom will die before she turns 18. He would be 68 at that point. I wonder - if that happens - does her famly have to return the money with interest?

The lack of human, especially female, rights in Saudi Arabia is incredible. And the US continues to turn a blind eye....

**AliceInWonderland** · December 22nd, 2008, 04:12 PM

^ i kno its sickening. totally sickening; we deal with the devil... and yet they hate us for the freedoms americans have and practice enthusiastically!