[Al Arabiya Latest] A Saudi couple had their marriage restored more than four years after a court ordered them to be divorced because they were from incompatible tribes, a Saudi newspaper reported on Sunday."Incompatible tribes." That means they weren't closely enough related.
The Supreme Judiciary Council in Riyadh on Saturday accepted a request by Mansour al-Timani and his wife Fatima to overrule the June, 2005 decision that annulled their marriage against their wishes, Arab News said. "The divorce ruling is void, therefore the return of the couple together is inevitable now and does not require (another) marriage ceremony," their legal representative Ahmad al-Sudairi told the newspaper.
The original complaint about the marriage had been lodged in court by Fatima's half-brothers, who said that Timani had lied to their father about his tribal roots when he married Fatima in 2002. The couple, who had moved away from Fatima's family to avoid harassment, was not even aware for several months that they had been officially divorced by the court, the paper said.
They remained together until they were arrested in 2006, reportedly for living together after being divorced. Her husband was released on bail, while Fatima was sent to prison with the couple's two children. In a November 2006 interview she told Arab News she would not leave the jail unless she could go back to her husband.