Saudi man spends 15 years in jail on father's order

Source: news.yahoo.com - 

JEDDAH - A Saudi Arabian man who was jailed for three years in 1997 has spent a further 12 years behind bars waiting for his father to pardon him, a local human rights group has said.

Eid al-Sinani, 43, was originally sentenced to three years in prison and 200 lashes for beating up his step mother, Musab al-Zahrani, a researcher at the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR), told Reuters.

However, when the sentence had been served the father asked a judge to keep his son in prison "until he is proven to be righteous by his father". The judge agreed and 12 years later Sinani is still in jail, Zahrani said.

Under the kingdom's Islamic legal system, law is not systematically codified and judicial rulings are subject to individual judges' interpretation of sharia.

A spokesman for Saudi Arabia's Justice Ministry, which oversees courts in the conservative Islamic kingdom, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the case.

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