Bring Back Adam!

I can't imagine the anguish British mother Rebecca Jones is suffering.

Rebecca's son Adam is in year 6 at St Christopher's Junior School, Bahrain - the same school my daughters attend. Adam's father, Jamal, was a Qatari national whom Rebecca married in 1998. Although the couple divorced in late 1999, Jamal continued to visit Adam regularly from Qatar.

When Jamal was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident in 2005, Rebecca stayed in touch with his family and took Adam to Qatar to visit his grandparents and aunts and uncles.

She and Adam were in Qatar visiting his relatives this October and had spent two enjoyable days with them. On the day they were due to leave, an uncle rang Rebecca at her hotel and asked if Adam could come once more to visit his sick grandmother. She agreed and a driver was sent for Adam. He later called to say he had arrived safely and would be back in an hour.

Rebecca was then asked by Adam's uncle to meet him to sign some papers relating to a parcel of land Adam was going to inherit. The legal papers were in Arabic, but this was an uncle she knew and trusted. She signed.

The papers were nothing to do with land, but were documents which allowed Adam's supposedly ill 77 year old grandmother to file for full custody of the child. This she duly did.

Rebecca has not seen her son since. She has had absolutely no contact with Adam since that date. Neither the Qatari judge nor the relatives have allowed her to visit or speak to her son. Nor did the judge insist on Adam being present at any of the court hearings so that his well-being could be established.

The final custody hearing was last week. The court awarded full custody to the grandmother.

It is inconceivable to me that any judge could grant custody to a 77 year old grandmother over the child's own mother. Adam has a sister and stepfather in Bahrain. He was born and raised there. He has friends he has been at school with since kindergarten. No-one, least of all Rebecca, knows how the situation has been explained to Adam. And how can any woman who has suffered the loss of a child in the way the grandmother did then callously inflict that same pain on another mother?

And it is unlikely the British government will do anything to intervene because the ruling was based on religious grounds. Its aim was to bring Adam back to the Islamic fold and to ensure that he is brought up according to his late father's religion. This despite the fact that Adam was enrolled in various classes in Bahrain to ensure his Muslim heritage was respected.

You see, in this part of the world, if a non-Muslim woman marries a Muslim man, that marriage and any children it produces are subject to Sharia law and if everything goes wrong, the "normal" rules as we see them do not apply. It was, apparently, pretty much a foregone conclusion that the Qatari relatives would be awarded custody, even though they were only able to bring the case through tricking Rebecca and Adam.

Friends of Rebecca Jones, parents at the school and the local press in Bahrain are all doing their bit to publicise the family's plight. I am trying to do the same by writing this post.