Moroccan Woman Alleges Torture, Attempted Rape by Saudi Police After Forced Separation from Son

The list of Moroccan women victims of torture in Saudi Arabia continues to grow. A complaint has just been filed by M. Ch, with the Casablanca Prosecutor’s Office for torture, attempted rape, forgery and use of forgery against her former Sudanese husband and members of the Saudi security forces. According to the weekend newspaper Assabah, the plaintiff was forced to leave Saudi Arabia, leaving her child behind, after separating from her husband.

M. Ch’s story begins in Casablanca where she meets her future ex-husband, a Sudanese man living in Saudi Arabia. Once married, she joins him in Saudi Arabia, in Jeddah to be precise, in 2006. But, she says, on her arrival there, she discovers that her husband already had a wife and children. This is where her ordeal begins, Assabah reports, citing the victim, who claims that she was "subjected to all kinds of psychological torture to get rid of her pregnancy because the first wife did not want this child."

Faced with her refusal to have an abortion, she will be "violently assaulted several times by her husband’s first wife, to the point of being hospitalized after receiving violent blows to the abdomen," the newspaper reports, specifying that M. Ch will only be saved thanks to Egyptian neighbors who intervened and insisted on taking her to the hospital. After the hospital, she files a complaint, but her husband corrupts, she says, elements of the police to prevent the case from being brought before the judge.

Later, under the threat of extradition, she will be placed in a special center worthy of a prison where a Saudi security agent tried to abuse her when he learned that she was Moroccan. She will still manage to return to Casablanca in pain. But, to top it off, when she returns to Jeddah after the expiration of a period of ban from Saudi territory, she discovers the infamy: her ex-husband has corrupted Saudi officials and officially registered her son as being that of his first wife.

All of M. Ch’s attempts to be heard have failed, so she turns to the authorities of her country for support. Recalling the procedure, Assabah notes that it is up to the Casablanca public prosecutor’s office, which has already received the victim’s complaint, to forward the file to the judicial police, who will be responsible for investigating the case.