MADINA: A judge in Madina sentenced an 18-year-old to four months in prison and 100 lashes for wanting to live with his mother and not his father. The father filed the case against his son. The teenager's mother claimed that the judge sentenced her son to jail a day before the court session was supposed to take place. The judge allegedly also did not allow her son to speak or hear representation from their lawyer. “He just issued the verdict even though the session was supposed to be held the next day,” she said. The divorced mother claims that her son was not disobedient to his father. She said her son only wanted to stay with her because his father was married to two women and had many children in his home. She said her ex-husband “invented the disobedience issue”. “With the assistance of lawyer Fahd Al-Qurashi I filed a complaint with the Supreme Judiciary Council to intervene and overturn the verdict that was issued against my son.” She said the Shariah allows children from the age of seven to decide with which parent they want to live in the event of a divorce. Al-Qurashi described the quick verdict as “strange” and said that he submitted an objection to the Supreme Judiciary Council in which he outlined the alleged mistake made by the judge and asking for the case to be reconsidered. He said the judge based his verdict on the statements of the father, the son's brother and a Bangladeshi worker who works for the father. The statements were received by the judge before the session.
