Buraidah, Saudi Arabia (TML) – Saudi women’s rights advocates are outraged after a 12-year-old girl was sold by her father into marriage with an 80-year-old man.
A Saudi father, whose name has not been released, sold his 12-year-old daughter to his 80-year old cousin for the equivalent of $22,600. The elderly man, who lives in the city of Buraidah, stands accused of raping the girl after the wedding. He has previously married three other young girls.
“She was raped and they took her to the hospital after the wedding night,” Wajiha Al-Huwaidar, a Saudi journalist who has been banned from reporting by the government told The Media Line. “Usually when the girl is very young, the authorities tell the husband not to touch her until after puberty. When he was interviewed, the guy just said she was old enough and he didn’t know she would get hurt.”
The girl, already in the custody of the elderly man, was reported to have shouted “I don’t want him, save me!” when contacted by phone by a journalist from the Al Riyadh, a local newspaper in the Saudi capital.
The girl’s mother, who had objected strongly to the marriage, took the case to local media after her lawyer’s efforts to get it legally annulled failed.
After the case was publicized, the public prosecutor of Al-Qassim Province is said to have set up a special committee to look into the case.
“They say they’re going to look into it but nothing will really happen,” Eman Al Nafjan, a Saudi blogger and women’s rights advocate told The Media Line. “Even if they solve this case, they are not going to recommend a new law to the king. We should set a legal minimum age at which girls can be married.”
“Without a law we get people like this 80 year old guy who takes advantage of the system to fulfill his sick obsession with little girls,” she wrote on her blog. “Where else in the world can a man openly say that he is in a polygamous marriage with four underage girls and not get arrested? At this rate we might as well start a tourism industry to attract rich Muslim pedophiles.”
http://newageislam.com/saudi-girl,-12,-married-off-to-80-year-old-man/islamic-world-news/d/2411
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5:11 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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