Shia gets three years in jail for forging papers

A Saudi court has sentenced a local Shia Muslim husband to three years in prison after he was convicted of forging documents showing he is Sunni to persuade a father to agree to his request to marry his daughter.

The husband, Abdullah Al Mahdi, quickly rejected the court verdict in the eastern province of Qateef and said he would submit a plea to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to annul that sentence and let him return to his Sunni wife.

The case, known as “the Abdullah and Samira case,” has hit headlines in Saudi newspapers over the past months following a court decision to separate the couple at the request of the wife’s father.

Al-Mahdi married Samira three years ago and was reported to have given her father in the central town of Madina some documents showing that he belongs to a Sunni Muslim tribe in southern Saudi Arabia. He also gave him papers proving that he regularly attends prayers at a Sunni mosque in the eastern region.

Two years after marriage, the father filed a court case asking for their separation after he received a requested letter from the Ministry of Islamic Affairs denying there is any mosque with the name supplied by the husband.

In a report on Wednesday, Shams newspaper said a court supported a request by Samira’s father six months ago to separate the couple although their have a daughter and the wife is pregnant again.

“On Wednesday, the court in the eastern province drew the curtain on the Abdullah and Samira case when it sentenced the husband to three years in prison and fined him SR8,000,” the paper said.

“Abdullah immediately rejected the verdict and considered it as unfair on the grounds it was based on assumptions and unconfirmed documents…he said the would present his case with all document he has to the Monarch.”

Shams quoted his wife as saying her cousin was behind the problem because she had rejected him when he asked her to marry him three years ago.

“What is my father doing is at the instigation of my cousin…my father blessed my marriage three years ago but he is now listening to my cousin who is seeking revenge…in fact, this is not a case of forgery but of revenge.”

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