JEDDAH — A court in Jeddah has ordered the Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution (BIP) to investigate the smuggling of a 6-year-old girl to the United States without the knowledge of her Saudi mother despite a court ruling in favor of the mother in a custody suit three years ago. The girl was apparently smuggled out of the country in order to deny the mother her custody, Al-Watan newspaper reported quoting court sources. The court asked the BIP to question all people involved and bring them to trial in a separate case. The paper said the Saudi woman had approached the General Court in Jeddah in 2012 (1434 AH) seeking divorce from her husband following irreconcilable problems between them. She also demanded the custody of her 6-year-old daughter. In a definitive ruling later that year, the court granted divorce to the woman and gave her the custody of her child. At the beginning of 1435, the court started hearing into a petition demanding the implementation of the verdict in the custody case. But the girl's father who lived in Riyadh did not attend the hearings despite several summons. The judge decided to send the case to the General Court in Riyadh, but eventually the father appeared before the Jeddah court, so the case file had to be brought back. As the trial progressed, the girl's father traveled to the United States to study after receiving a scholarship and since then the girl had disappeared, said the court source. The mother later learned that her daughter's paternal grandfather and uncle were hiding her, even though they had denied the knowledge of her whereabouts, the source said. "The judge asked the security authorities to search their home. Fearing that they will be exposed, the girl's relatives sent her to stay with her father in the United States," he said. The source said the court asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the police and the Baha governorate to investigate the girl's disappearance. Investigations confirmed that the girl was sent to America, which made the court to ask the BIP to question those involved in smuggling her out of the country and put them on trial, the source said. The girl's maternal uncle told Al-Watan that her sister had suffered a lot because of the disappearance of his niece. "It is a shameful and inhumane act to deprive a little girl of her right to stay with her mother for three long years. My sister had been through a very bad psychological state all these years," he said. "We will not give up our demand to prosecute all those who were involved in smuggling my niece out of the country," he added.
