An Ethiopian expatriate, who was found guilty of forging a marriage certificate between herself and a Saudi man, is hoping that new information provided to the Supreme Criminal Appeals Court by her nation’s consulate can help clear her name.
She had earlier used the certificate in Sharia Court to claim that her Saudi spouse was the father of her son but it backfired when she was reported for forgery by her former partner.
In July, the High Criminal Court sentenced the 34-year-old mother to three years in prison on charges of falsifying an official document with intent to use it as if it was genuine.
She took to the Supreme Criminal Appeals Court to contest the ruling and the Public Prosecution requested additional information about the document, to shed more light on the situation.
After two months of waiting, a letter from the Ethiopian Consulate General was received by the appeals court. “The marriage certificate was submitted by the couple to the consulate in person,” read the letter. “They came together to the consulate’s offices to seek authentication.
“After the Foreign Affairs Ministry found the document to be genuine, the consulate went forward and granted it the requested authentication.”
The GDN earlier reported that the marriage contract appeared to have been issued by a regional Sharia Court in Ethiopia and had several stamps confirming its authenticity, signed by three diplomats.
The contract also sported an apostille issued by the Foreign Ministry’s Legalisation Office, which had agreed to certify the document after the Ethiopian mission forwarded it to the office.
The legitimacy of the nuptials came into question in the first place after the woman objected to a deportation penalty from the court, having been earlier convicted of stealing from the man.
She claimed that she had a child in Bahrain that she could not be separated from and submitted the marriage certificate to an appeals court as proof of her being the child’s mother.
Judges upheld the one-year prison sentence but dropped the deportation order.
She then took to the Sharia Court, in an attempt to prove that he was the father of her infant son, but lost the case.
The man then reported her to the authorities, claiming that the pair had never married, and further refused to recognise the child as his legitimate offspring.
The appellant stated that the matrimony was completed in the presence of witnesses in a hotel in Adliya and that her sweetheart gave her a BD1,500 dowry to make the contract official.
In the theft case, the Lower Criminal Court sentenced her to a year in prison for taking appliances from his apartment after he had dumped her. The spurned woman packed a TV, washing machine, oven, air fryer, microwave oven and three food processors into a six-wheeler truck.
Appeal court judges adjourned the hearing to October 26 for further defence arguments.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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