This ain't no Harlequin romance about a Sheikh of Araby

Family law is notorious for allegations that aren't quite true.

Still, the story below has some credibility because of the meetings between officials.

Under Saudi law, as I understand it, custody of children is normally given to the father when a couple split up -- that was the Canadian practice a hundred years ago. If the children were born in, and have lived all their lives in, Saudi then, ghastly as it sounds, it makes sense to treat them under Saudi law.

The $300,000 appears to be grotesque but, again, perhaps there is another side to the story -- people who have to pay equalisation on divorce here in Canada often see that as unfair and extortion.

Still, Canadian officials don't seem to have been very media savvy in their comments; Canadians abroad are subject to foreign law but that doesn't mean the Canadian government can wash their hands of them. (And the reference to Saudi Arabia's Commission on Human Rights is amusing -- remember it is a crime to follow Christianity in Saudi).

Saudi husband demands $300K for wife's freedom

Marian Scott, Canwest News Service
Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009

The common-law husband of a Quebec woman is demanding $300,000 for the release of his three children and wife, who swore in an affidavit that she has been held against her will in Saudi Arabia since 2005.

Samir Said Ramthi Al Bishi met with Canadian officials in Saudi Arabia on Sept. 22, at which time he demanded the cash in exchange for the release of his wife, Nathalie Morin, 25, a Longueuil woman and mother to the couple's three children, ages 7, 3, and 11 months.

Canadian officials responded by saying Mr. Al Bishi's demand is legal under Saudi law, so "we cannot take sides and will continue to consider the situation of Mrs. Morin and her three children as a private, family matter," consular official Nathalie Tenorio-Roy told Ms. Morin's mother, Johanne Durocher, in an email on Oct. 22.

...
Meanwhile, information obtained by Bloc Quebecois MP Francine Lalonde under freedom of information reveals that Canadian consular officials suggested Ms. Morin's children might be better off staying in Saudi Arabia without her.

"Maybe we will get the children to Canada -- to be with their high-school-educated, 22-year-old mother," an embassy official wrote in a memo on Oct. 19, 2006.

In another memo, sent the previous day, the official wrote: "We have higher priorities and I have spoken with Nathalie -- not her priority either."

...
Ms. Morin met Mr. Al Bishi in 2001 in Montreal, where he was living illegally. He was deported in 2002, soon after she had a child by him. She moved to Saudi Arabia in 2005 after two visits there.
...
Natalie Sarafian, press attache to Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, noted that when Canadians leave Canadian territory, they are subject to foreign laws.

"Minister Cannon's greatest wish is that this matter is settled and we are doing everything we can to enable this," she said.

Ms. Sarafian added that Mr. Cannon met with Saudi Arabia's Commission on Human Rights and raised the Morin case with his Saudi counterpart on Saturday during a visit to the Middle East.

James Morton
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