Saudi court rejects plea to annul 8-year-old girl's marriage to 58-year-old man

The divorce plea was filed in August by the girl's divorced mother with a court at Unayzah, 220 kilometres (135 miles) north of Riyadh just after the marriage contract was signed by the father and the groom."She doesn't know yet that she has been married," the lawyer said then of the girl who was about to begin her fourth year at primary school. Relatives who did not wish to be named told AFP that the marriage had not yet been consummated, and that the girl continued to live with her mother. They said that the father had set a verbal condition by which the marriage is not consummated for another 10 years, when the girl turns 18. The father had agreed to marry off his daughter for an advance dowry of 30,000 riyals ($8,000), as he was apparently facing financial problems, they said.The father was in court and he remained adamant in favour of the marriage, they added.The mother's said he was going to appeal the verdict at the court of cassation, the supreme court in the ultraconservative kingdom which applies Islamic Sharia law in its courts.Arranged marriages involving pre-adolescents are occasionally reported in the Arabian Peninsula, including in Saudi Arabia where the strict conservative Wahhabi version of Sunni Islam holds sway and polygamy is common.In Yemen in April, another girl aged eight was granted a divorce after her unemployed father forced her to marry a man of 28. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/saudiarabia/3884696/Saudi-court-rejects-plea-to-annul-8-year-old-girls-marriage-to-58-year-old-man.html
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