guardian fighting for custody of Christian widow Siham Qandah’s two minor children, ending a long legal battle that was closely watched by the international community, a Christian news agency reported late Thursday June 16. Compass Direct Compass Direct said the June 13 decision reconfirmed an earlier verdict from Amman’s Al-Abdali Sharia Court two months ago, which revoked the legal guardianship of Abdullah al-Muhtadi, the maternal uncle of Qandah’s daughter Rawan and son Fadi.
The news agency qouted Qandah’s lawyer as saying that this final verdict from the appellate court cannot be appealed. It effectively cancels all other pending cases regarding permanent custody of the children, now 16 and 15 years of age.
Al-Muhtadi has been ordered by the court to repay misspent funds he had withdrawn from his wards’ inheritance accounts without judicial approval. He is also expected to be required to repay several thousand dinars in monthly orphan benefits which he failed to forward over the past 11 years, Compass Direct reported.
Qandah must now select a new guardian for court approval to oversee her children’s legal affairs until they reach maturity at age 18. Under Jordan’s Islamic inheritance laws, the new guardian also must have a Muslim religious identity.
RAISED AS CHRISTIANS
Although born, baptized and raised as Christians, Rawan and Fadi were designated legally as Muslims after their soldier father’s death 11 years ago in the Serbian province of Kosovo, where he served in the international peacekeeping forces.
At that time an Islamic court had produced an unsigned “conversion” certificate claiming that their father had secretly converted to Islam three years before his death.
Under Islamic law, this automatically made his minor children Muslims, thus preventing their Christian mother from handling their financial affairs. Qandah asked al-Muhtadi, her estranged brother who had converted to Islam as a teenager, to serve as their legal
Muslim guardian.
POCKETING MONEY
But al-Muhtadi allegedly gradually began pocketing some of the children’s monthly benefits and later filed suit to take personal custody of the children, in order to raise them as Muslims. In the process, he withdrew nearly half of their U.N.-allocated trust funds, allegedly to pay lawyers’ fees, Compass Direct said citing sources in the area.
After a four-year court battle, Jordan’s Supreme Islamic Court ruled in al-Muhtadi’s favor in February 2002, ordering Qandah to give her children into his custody. Subsequently, she and her children went into hiding several times to avoid arrest or forced separation.
Although the case remained virtually unreported in Jordan, Qandah’s dilemma has attracted international press coverage for more than three years. King Abdullah II and other members of the Jordanian royal family have since monitored the case, pledging that she would not lose custody of her children.
PRICE "HAPPY"
“I am very happy with her results,” Prince Mired bin Raed of the Jordanian royal family told Compass Direct from Amman yesterday, after speaking with Qandah by telephone. “She told me that she won the case, and she is really delighted that everything is over now.”
With the child custody impasse resolved, Rawan and Fadi Qandah will no longer be blacklisted from traveling outside the country.
At age 18, each of the children will be permitted to decide whether their official Jordanian identity will be Muslim or Christian. But under Islamic laws of inheritance, their choice to be Christians will require them to forfeit the UN trust funds deposited in their name, along with their ongoing orphan benefits from the Jordanian army, Compass Direct said.
INTENSE INTERACTION
For the past three years, Qandah’s life has been consumed by intense interaction between her lawyers, the courts, her spiritual advisers and a number of civic consultants in a fulltime struggle to retain custody of her children.
She now hopes to find employment or possibly start up a small shop that would generate sufficient income for her family. As soon as the children’s new guardian is appointed by the court, she will again receive a small monthly stipend for their combined orphan benefits, Compass Direct reported.
Qandah and her children live in northern Jordan in the city of Husn, where they attend the Husn Baptist Church and the children are enrolled in the local Roman Catholic school. (With Compass Direct, BosNewsLife Research and reports from Iran).
