JEDDAH: In a bizarre twist to the two-and-half-year public matrimonial dispute between Saudi national Saeed Al-Shahrani and his Canadian wife Nathalie Morin, Al-Shahrani is now reported to be willing to divorce his wife, give her complete custody of their three children and let them leave the country in return for $300,000.
According to a Canadian Foreign Ministry representative, Al-Shahrani made the offer on Sept. 22 at a meeting in Dammam with Canadian consular officials.
Morin’s mother, Johanne Durocher who lives near Montreal and has been campaigning for her daughter and grandchildren’s return to Canada, has condemned the proposal as a ransom demand.
The Canadian Foreign Ministry has declined to become involved according to an e-mail sent to Durocher by a ministry official because Al-Shahrani’s request is legal under Saudi law. As such, it is “a private, family matter” in which they cannot interfere, the e-mail said.
Saudi law states that if a woman wants a divorce but her husband does not she may pay her husband an agreed sum of money to release her from the marriage contract.
According to the Canadians, the Morin case was discussed by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal and his Canadian counterpart, Lawrence Cannon, when the latter was in Riyadh last month.
Prince Saud reportedly said that it was a private but complex family issue. Cannon also discussed it with President of the Saudi Human Rights Commission Bandar Al-Aiban who, according to the Canadians, assured Cannon that he was following the case, that a solution needed to be found and that he was looking into the matter of the children’s education.
Durocher told Arab News that $300,000 was an impossible sum for her to find. “I don’t have that kind of money and Saeed knows I don’t have it. So he asked the Canadian government to pay the sum, not me.”
She has called on the Saudi authorities to pay her son-in-law.
“If I can send a message to the Saudi government, I would request that they help us in our situation by paying the requested $300,000 because this is the only way the saga of my daughter will end,” she said.
