Manama: A Bahraini court has sentenced an American mother to six months in jail for failing to comply with an earlier custody ruling to hand over her daughter to her former husband.
However, the court said that the mother could pay 100 Bahraini Dinars (Dh975) to suspend the ruling and avoid the jail term pronounced in absentia after she did not show up at the trial on Monday.
According to the court papers, the couple, a Bahraini man and a US woman, were married in 2004 and remained together until 2009 when irreconcilable differences led to their divorce.
The mother kept their daughter with her, but the father filed a lawsuit requesting her custody.
The court in November 2010 awarded him the custody and asked the mother to hand over the daughter. However, upon hearing the verdict, the mother left the court with her daughter and reportedly disappeared without leaving any trace.
The father complained that he could not locate her after she changed her address, requested the assistance of the police and filed a new lawsuit.
In its verdict on Monday, the Lower Criminal Court imposed a travel ban on the daughter whose age was not given.
Mixed marriages are common in Bahrain, a country that has no restrictions on choosing spouses on the basis of nationality, race or religion.
While local women tend to marry men from Arab countries, Bahraini men often choose to take Asian or Western women as wives. Marriages between foreigners are also allowed in Bahrain.
