Bahraini woman struggles to enrol child in school

Manama: A Bahraini mother is struggling to enrol her Saudi-born daughter in school, as the girl has no identification documents. 

This reportedly comes after the mother smuggled the girl into Bahrain while she escaped from her Saudi ex-husband in Dammam eight years back, Saudi media reported.

According to Saudi news site Sabaq, the Bahraini woman told her ex-husband in 2008 that she’s taking her daughter to a public park in Dammam, before she vanished along with the four-year-old.

The woman apparently managed to enter Bahrain through King Fahd Causeway without holding any identification documents for the girl.

Reports said the mother visited the Saudi Embassy in Bahrain recently, asking them to issue an ID for her daughter (aged 12 now), but came out of the embassy empty-handed.

The news site said the girl wouldn’t be accepted at any hospital or school in the Kingdom, as “she doesn’t exist in the population directory, yet her mother insists on not returning her to the father.”

“The embassy, in cooperation with security authorities in the Kingdom (Saudi Arabia), has held the father accountable for not paying the monthly child support amounts of SR500 (BD50). This comes following a Bahraini court verdict, which ignored the fact that the girl was smuggled into Bahrain without any formal documents and ordered in favour of the mother.

The father was insisting on holding the mother and her associates legally accountable for smuggling the girl into Bahrain without official papers, but the court refused to interfere in the matter,” Sabaq reported.

The report added that the court’s decision to oblige the father to pay for child support came after the mother was assisted by the Child Support Centre in Bahrain.