DOHA: Inside a luxurious compound, a Qatari woman has been made a prisoner in her bedroom and sometimes starved and beaten for shaming her family by fleeing Doha in 2002 to marry an Egyptian man. My parents tricked me back and threatened to send me to prison unless I asked for a divorce and renounced my marriage and when I refused they jailed me, a tearful Hamda Fahd bin Jassem Al-Thani said in a voice message received by rights group Amnesty International in January. I was jailed for a year and then they forced me back to my family home where I was locked up in a room that feels like a crypt and treated like an animal. Please help me, help me, and do not abandon me. What Hamda did was a grave affront to tradition in the conservative Arab Muslim states of the Gulf that was made worse by the fact she is a Sheikha, or noblewoman. Marriage like other personal and family affairs in male-dominated Gulf societies is governed by Sharia (Islamic law) and is usually arranged by parents with many women denied the right to choose their partner. There are cases similar to Hamda s all over the Gulf Cooperation Council countries which include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. All are documented in an Amnesty report issued last year. Those who marry foreigners are often treated like second-class citizens and their children are denied nationality. Hamda was snatched in Cairo by Qatari security officers nine days after her marriage on November 5, 2002 and was put on a plane back to Qatar, where she was detained for nearly six months at the Al-Sayliyah prison near a U.S. military base, according to her husband Sayed Saleh, 42. Qatar s state-sanctioned National Human Rights Committee, whose members are mostly government representatives, acknowledged the 29-year-old woman s case and said it was trying to reach an amicable solution with the possible intervention of the emir himself, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani. The authorities are not against a solution to Hamda s situation and her being reunited with her husband, the problem is that her parents oppose it, Ali Al-Marri, the committee s secretary general, said in an interview. He said rescuing Hamda by force is not an option because it may trigger a violent reaction from her father, who, according to Marri, has threatened to kill her on several occasions. Asked why she had been imprisoned, the Qatari committee s Marri said: Her father wanted to kill her, it was for her protection. She was later held for another six months at the special security directorate in Doha before being handed over to her family in November 2003. They offered me $2 million (1.6 million euros) to divorce her, but I refused, her husband Saleh told AFP by telephone from Cairo. He first met her in 2000 in the lobby of a hotel in the western Saudi city of Jeddah, where he had been working as a factory manager. They remained in touch by telephone until he came to Doha in 2001 to ask for her hand in marriage from her father, considered her lawful guardian under sharia. He refused to see me and sent me a message that he had no daughters for marriage. I tried again and the same thing happened, Saleh said. In her voice recording, Hamda said they were compelled to marry secretly in Egypt after seeking the advice of clerics in Doha and explaining to them that her father had rebuffed a string of other suitors before Saleh. More tolerant schools of Islamic jurisprudence, like the one in Egypt, sometimes allow an Islamic court judge to substitute as guardian in a marriage contract. Marri said the legitimacy of Hamda s marriage was not in question. Hamda s case may be an embarrassment for gas-rich Qatar, which despite its tiny population of 750,000, including only some 150,000 nationals, has become a strategic U.S. and Western ally given the relatively progressive policies of the emir. Racheting up the pressure, Amnesty International, which last year wrote to Qatar s emir and issued a worldwide appeal for Hamda Al-Thani s release, plans to report the case in May to the UN s Committee against Torture. I think they are quite embarrassed by this whole affair, Dina Al-Mamoun, author of last year s Amnesty report on Gulf women, said. The country s first ever legislative elections are expected to take place early next year with the participation of women. AFP
Qatari woman imprisoned by family for marrying Egyptian
