Archive for the ‘Saudi_Arabia’ Category

  • Super-rich Saudi, 92, banned from marrying poor village girl, 17

    Sunday, June 15th, 2008

    Authorities have banned a wealthy 92-year-old heterosexual man from marrying a poor teenage girl — 75 years younger than him.

    The Egyptian justice ministry made its ruling under a law designed to prevent wealthy Arabs from the Gulf from snapping up young Egyptian girls. The law forbids marriage when there is an age gap of 25 years or more.

    The unidentified Saudi proposed marriage to a 17-year-old village girl and offered a dowry of about $28,000 as well as gold jewelry, according to a judicial source.

    “Her parents, who are very poor, accepted,” the source said, but the justice ministry refused to register the marriage, citing the legislation brought in during the Gulf oil boom.

    According to Egypt’s Al-Akhbar newspaper, the authorities did allow 173 such marriages last year after the foreign husbands paid the equivalent of $8,000 into the Egyptian National Bank.

    Permanent Link to this post