Adam's not coming home

I last posted about Adam Jones in November. 10-year-old Adam attends the same Bahrain school as my daughters. Last October he went to Qatar with his British mother, Rebecca, to visit the family of his late Qatari father. His 77-year-old Qatari grandmother was supposedly ill and wanted to see him.

During the visit, Adam's mother was asked by his uncle to sign some legal papers, ostensibly concerning property in Qatar. In fact, the papers were nothing to do with land but instead allowed the grandmother to file for custody of Adam, which she duly did.

Rebecca has been in Qatar ever since, fighting for Adam's return. She feared that if she left Qatar, she may not have been allowed to return. Her second husband, Barrie, has remained in Bahrain taking care of their four-year-old daughter.

The Qatari court awarded full custody to the grandmother in November and Rebecca was denied visitation rights. She immediately appealed the decision and was awarded visitation rights at the end of November, allowing her to see Adam twice a week. He was distraught when he discovered the truth of what had been happening. Up until that time he had been told he was staying in Qatar because of the swine flu scare in Bahrain.

Rebecca has received threats from locals in Qatar and the Qatari uncle has supposedly used his influence with the police to intimidate members of the court and Rebecca's Qatari sponsors, without whom she has no standing to bring a court case.

During the appeal process, the court heard from Adam for the first time. He said he wanted to come home to Bahrain with his mother. His wishes have been denied. Judges have now dismissed Rebecca's appeal against the custody order. Adam will remain with his Qatari family and Rebecca's visitation rights will be entirely at their discretion. Rebecca and her family are devastated.

Throughout her ordeal, there has been strong support for Rebecca in the English-speaking Bahraini press and from the Bahrain Human Rights Watch Society, which claims that by not properly considering Adam's wishes and welfare Qatar has breached the UN Convention on Rights of the Child, to which it is a signatory.

There have also been letters to the local English-speaking paper from people who have experienced similar custody battles, whether as parents or as children who were forced to leave their mothers to live with their father or their father's family. Rebecca and Adam's case is not unusual, particularly given the large number of Gulf residents who are married to expatriates.

The Qatari courts apply Sharia law, which generally awards custody of male children over a certain age to the father or, if he is unable to be custodian, to another of his family members. In particular the court considers the parents' religion, where they live and to whom they are married. Rebecca remarried without the consent of her former husband's family, resides in Bahrain and sends Adam to an international school - along with many other Arab children - and all this will have counted against her. However, whatever the court's guidelines, it will often make exceptions, particularly in cases in which a parent is from an influential family or has powerful connections in Qatar, as seems to have been the case here.

Custody battles are always distressing. Sharia law appears to favour the father, certainly in the case of boys. Although they are now adopting a more balanced approach, where joint custody couldn't be agreed, UK courts traditionally awarded custody to the mother, often resulting in loss of contact with the father. However, in the UK, the best interests of the child are paramount when considering any custody issue and where a child is old enough to express his wishes, he should be listened to. To me, this is where the Qatari decision has fallen down. Adam wants to go home to his mother; he has expressly said so in court. He should have been heard.

Rebecca now intends returning to the UK to commence proceedings under the UK court system. I wish her luck.