Saudi Arabia: Video lands expat doctor in jail over domestic violence
Court passes judgement on video clip secretly filmed by his wife
Cairo: A Saudi court has sentenced an expatriate doctor to 15 days in prison after convicting him of verbally assaulting his wife, who documented the attack with a video clip she had secretly filmed in their bedroom.
In making the decision, the Jeddah-based court relied on the video and WhatsApp message that included "inappropriate" phases on the part of the husband, who holds an Arab nationality, according to the Saudi newspaper Okaz.
The case started when the Arab wife had filed a lawsuit claiming she had been assaulted by her husband. The claimant had backed up her allegation with a video clip and WhatsApp messages, as well as an earlier report she had submitted to the police about harm she had suffered as a result.
The court had looked into the content of the abusive messages sent from the doctor to his wife, which included insults, threats and blackmail, the report said.
The court also checked the video that had been secretly filmed by the wife, featuring a verbal argument with the claimant having her hair pulled and her arm twisted while she was screaming for help.
When confronted, the defendant argued that his wife's furtive filming of incidents in the bedroom constituted a violation of privacy, and alleged that the video and the WhatsApp messages were fake. "Most likely she sent them to herself from my phone," he was quoted as saying.
However, the court considered the evidence presented by the wife amounting to proofs of the husband’s guilt and ordered him be jailed for 15 days.
Lawyers said the Saudi judiciary accepts digital evidence in cases of verbal abuse and assault, based on the Islamic Sharia rule that the proof is on the claimant.