90-yr-old Saudi man to sue family of teenage runaway bride 'over lost dowry'
New York, Jan 9 (ANI)
A 90-year-old Saudi man is threatening to sue the family of his 15-year-old runaway child bride, asking them to return either the girl or the money he paid them to marry her.
The man told Al Arabiya that he had paid the girl's parents a 17,500 dollars dowry, which made the marriage "legal and correct."
But on his first night with the teen bride, the man said the girl locked him out of the bedroom and fled to her parents' home, the New York Daily News reports.
Suhaila Zein al-Abedin, a member of the Saudi National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) has asked authorities to become involved "as soon as possible to save this child from tragedy."
Abedin, who stressed that the condition was not satisfied in this case, said that while it is not unusual for older men to marry younger women in Saudi Arabia, there must still be mutual consent for a proper Islamic marriage to occur.