10-year jail upheld for husband who detained woman in cell-like room for 9 years
2 other siblings of victim handed down 7-year imprisonment in the high-profile case
Cairo: Kuwait’s top appeals court has confirmed 10-year jail sentencing earlier handed down to two members of a family charged with incarcerating a woman by force inside a house for nine years in a high-profile case in the country, a Kuwaiti newspaper has reported.
The Court of Cassation has upheld the verdict against the woman’s ex-husband and her half-brother, Al Anba added.
The court also sentenced two other brothers of the victim to seven years in prison each in final rulings.
The case surfaced in May last year after Kuwaiti police had freed the woman from a cell-like room in the family’s house in Al Farwaniya governorate where she had been detained due to a dispute with the family after her divorce.
The incarceration was imposed on the woman after she asked to live independently away from the family after her divorce, an idea categorically rejected by her father who locked up in the room, local media reported at the time.
Her brothers purportedly kept her detention after the father’s death.
Her plight was revealed through a housemaid, who communicated with her and informed a lawyer who in turn filed a legal complaint to Kuwait’s chief prosecutor. Later, police raided the house, freed the woman and arrested the suspects.
Authorities have coordinated to provide housing to the victim whose name or age was not revealed.