BlackBerry strikes again at Saudi marital life

Two Saudi couple have been divorced over BlackBerry , just nine months after they married and a week after a Saudi wife sought divorce from her husband over the handset, a local newspaper reported on Saturday.

While marathon negotiations between Saudi Arabia’s telecommunications regulators and the Canadian BlackBerry manufacturers succeeded in restoring the suspended service last week, such negotiations between the families of the couple in the Central town of Medina failed to produce results.

Alriyadh newspaper said the court finally granted divorce to the couple after the wife insisted that her husband must decide whether to have her or BlackBerry .

“I gave him a choice…either me or his BlackBerry ….he chose BlackBerry ,” the paper quoted the unidentified wife as saying. “I had to seek divorce because I had asked him many times to get rid of is BlackBerry handset but he refused…I did so because this handset had taken all his time.”

The case came a week after another Saudi wife in the Eastern port of Dammam sought divorce from her husband after he lashed her with the whip for showing more interest in her BlackBerry than him.