Man jailed for speaking out against court ruling

A Saudi man has spent two weeks from his four-month prison term for speaking to a local newspaper against "unjust" court verdict in his own divorce case.

The jail ruling was handed down by the same judge.

The verdict was a flagrant violation of human rights, the Saudi judicial system, and clear instructions of King AbdullahKing Abdullah securing individual rights, said Sheikh Mekhlef Al-Daham, a human rights activist and representative of the National Human Rights Society(NHRS) in the Eastern Province. Taking up the case of Ammer Al-Shammari whose wife was divorced against his will by a court order, Al-Daham said "After my client's Syrian ex-wife, from whom he has three children, was naturalized, she filed for divorce with no good reason and she was granted a favorable verdict from the court despite her husband's objection guaranteed by the Shariah law."

Ten days after the divorce was announced, the judge hit the man with three orders. He was ordered to move out of the family house, to stop visiting his children at the house, and to pay all utility bills incurred by the mother and her three children. The judge also ordered the man's employer to deduct SR3,000 from his monthly salary to be deposited into the ex-wife's account.

A year after the divorce, the woman married another man and handed over the house and the children to Al-Shammari. “On her second marriage news, Al-Shammari went to the same judge to report the new developments in the case, asking him to re-consider his original verdict."It has been automatically void with her second marriage," the judge replied to the man, Al-Daham said.

The judge also ordered the employer to stop the SR3,000 monthly deduction in child support from Al-Shammari's pay.

“My client returned to his house and his three children, and he eventually got a new wife," the lawyer said.

But the unexpected happened, Al-Daham said. “Seven months into her second marriage, the ex-wife resurfaced, divorced again, and pregnant, asking my client to leave the house as per the court's original verdict, but my client refused to leave his own house," he added.

With the woman taking the case back to court, "The judge surprisingly upheld his already void ruling, responding with a 24-hour detention period to silence my client's objection," Al-Daham said.

"The man was given one-month to settle the case with his ex-wife," he added.

Al-Shammari appealed to the Supreme Court in Riyadh against the court's decision to uphold its own void ruling with a new development in the case that he, Al-Daham said, had nothing to do with it , moving him speak to the press about it.

It was the newspaper statement of my client that infuriated the judge sentencing Al-Shammari to four months in prison; a ruling that contravened human rights and was done without due process,” Al-Daham told the Saudi Gazette

Al-Shammari, who is now in jail in Jubail for about two weeks, is hoping that the Saudi Supreme Court and the Minister of Justice will intervene to resolve his case.

Under the Islamic marital law, the second husband should be responsible for the woman he just divorced, not her first husband, Al-Daham said.

"It is hard to believe that expressing a personal legitimate grievance would result in a misery at the hand of court," said Al-Daham, who has represented many cases of human rights violations involving both citizens and expatriates.