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Final Ruling Delayed in Jordan Custody Case
Christian widow promised verdict on March 15.
by Barbara G. Baker
www.compassdirect.org
 
ISTANBUL, February 21 (Compass) -- The Muslim guardian trying to take custody of a Christian widow’s two minor children appeared before an Islamic court in Jordan yesterday, asking the judge to postpone the scheduled hearing until March 15.
 
A final verdict had been expected yesterday from Amman’s Al-Abdali Sharia Court, where Siham Qandah’s lawyer was arguing an appeals case to remove Abdullah al-Muhtadi as guardian of his client’s children.
 
Al-Muhtadi has been accused of financial improprieties for withdrawing nearly $17,000 from the children’s trust funds, allegedly for lawyers’ fees and a refrigerator he claimed to have purchased for her and her children.
 
It was not clear why Judge Mahmud Zghl accepted the defendant’s request to postpone the case for still another month. At the last hearing in the case on February 6, Judge Zghl had ordered al-Muhtadi to bring to the court on February 20 his proof of purchase for the refrigerator he testified he had bought for Qandah.
 
Yesterday’s session was the ninth scheduled hearing since Jordan’s Supreme Islamic Court accepted Qandah’s appeal last August, ordering the lower court to review the case and investigate the Muslim guardian. Al-Muhtadi failed to answer summons to appear for three of those court sessions, and the judge himself was on leave during one scheduled hearing.
 
The current appeals case is the Christian mother’s last lawsuit in a three-year battle since the Supreme Islamic Court of Jordan revoked her legal custody in February 2002 of her daughter Rawan and son Fadi, now 16 and 15.
 
Al-Muhtadi is Qandah’s estranged brother who converted to Islam as a teenager. Qandah had asked him to serve as her children’s Muslim guardian 10 years ago, after her husband died serving as a soldier in the U.N. Peacekeeping Forces in Kosovo.
 
Jordan’s Islamic courts did not allow Qandah to dispute a “conversion” certificate unsigned by her husband but endorsed by two Muslims, alleging he had secretly converted to Islam three years before his death. So under Islamic law, the two children were declared Muslims, even though they had been baptized as Christians before their father’s death. Accordingly, all the children’s finances, including their orphan benefits, had to be handled by a Muslim.
 
But al-Muhtadi started pocketing some of the children’s monthly benefits, later dipping into their U.N.-allocated trust funds by obtaining signed approvals from highly placed Islamic court judges.
 
In 1998, the guardian decided to sue under Islamic law statutes to take the children away from their Christian mother and raise them as Muslims. After the Supreme Islamic Court of Jordan ruled in his favor in February 2002, Qandah has faced possible arrest and separation from her children for refusing to relinquish her children to al-Muhtadi’s custody. The children are blacklisted by court order from leaving Jordan.
 
For the past six months, the office of the Royal Court has periodically telephoned the court after scheduled hearings on Qandah’s case, indicating that its progress is being monitored by King Abdullah II, Queen Rania and other members of the royal family who have pledged the children will not be taken away from their mother.
 
According to a close friend of Qandah’s, Judge Zghl talked at length with the widow after yesterday’s hearing. She was reportedly assured that there would be no more delays on her case, with March 15 to be the final hearing.
 
“The judge has told Siham he is ready to rule on the case, but of course, he cannot say what his decision will be,” the source said. “I hope that the judge is now convinced that this guardian is corrupt.”