A couple who eloped and got married in Dubai have been arrested for adultery because the girl did not have her father's permission to marry. The 20-year-old Palestinian woman and her Pakistani husband were arrested for adultery when her father told police that she had got married without his permission.

A marriage contract is invalid here unless the father of the bride has signed it, according to the Ras Al Khaimah Court. A senior official in the Public Prosecutor's office said that the couple had been involved in an emotional relationship without her family knowing about it.

The two agreed that she would run away from home and they would meet in Dubai. There they would get married without the knowledge of her family and present the family with a fait accompli.

The husband found two witnesses who signed their marriage contract. The couple spent a few days in Dubai and then returned to Ras Al Khaimah believing that her family would have to accept reality. But instead her father went to the police.

The police arrested the couple for adultery and rejected their marriage contract. The Public Prosecutor decided that the contract did not conform to Islamic regulations since it lacked the father's signature.

The Public Prosecutor said that since the marriage contract had been drawn up in Dubai, the Dubai Public Prosecutor was the competent authority to handle the case. The case was therefore referred to Dubai.

The girl belonged to a conservative family which would not allow her to go to university even though she had scored 91 per cent in her General Secondary Certificate. The family was shocked when they discovered that she had run away. The father and his eldest son left work to search for her, but in vain.

In due course the girl returned from Dubai and contacted her sister to sound out the family's reaction. The mother fainted and was taken to hospital. The brother rushed out of the house with a knife, saying he would kill his sister for "disgracing the family".

The father then had no choice but to go to the police. First they arrested the brother to ensure that he harmed nobody. They then arrested the couple. Sheikh Ahmed Amin, judge in the Ras Al Khaimah Shariah Court, said that the Hanafi School, one of the four schools of Islamic law, accepted that a woman 18 or older could legally make her own marriage decisions and that the father's consent made no difference.

But the other three - Hanbali, Shafie and Maliki - made the agreement of the father a key condition. Without his consent, charges of adultery could be brought. In Ras Al Khaimah the courts took the second point of view, rejecting marriage contracts that did not have the sanction of the bride's father.

In this case, the judge said, the girl should apply to the Ruler of the emirate or to the head of the Ras Al Khaimah Court requesting him to attest her marriage contract in order to make it legal.

The head of the court would then hear the father's objections. If the father convinces him, he would annul the contract, if not, he would attest it. It would then be accepted everywhere.