Dori: Washington woman trapped in Saudi Arabia by oppressive Sharia law

I read a long piece in the New York Times about a 31-year-old woman from Washington — it doesn’t say specifically where, but it looked like the Wenatchee area — who is currently trapped in Saudi Arabia.

I’ll tell you what, I would be sick to my stomach if one of my daughters chose to go to a country that is under Sharia law.

Bethany Vierra moved to Saudi Arabia in 2011 to teach at a women’s university and do research for a graduate degree. I’m sure it sounded like a wonderful life adventure for a woman in her 20s. But there are a lot of adventurous places — you don’t need to go to a country with Sharia law for your adventure.

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While there, she met a Saudi businessman and married him two years later. According to the New York Times article, her friends all liked the man and thought he seemed like a wonderful guy. Vierra and her husband later had a daughter together, who is now 4.

Sometime after they got married, Vierra said that her husband became emotionally and verbally abusive, and she asked for a divorce. In Saudi Arabia, under Sharia law, all a man has to do to get a divorce is say that he wants a divorce. But when it’s the woman who wants the divorce, the man has to approve her request. For more than a year, this guy would not do it. She had to file a request with the Saudi court. Eventually, the court hearing accepted the husband’s claim that he divorced her six months before.

Here’s where it just gets sickening. Women have guardians in Saudi Arabia. Even though they’re divorced, Vierra’s ex-husband remains her official guardian and the sponsor of her residency. He has refused to give her permission to travel. She was not able to come home to Washington to spend Christmas with her family. Her ex has also, as of last month, let her residency expire, which means that her being in Saudi Arabia is illegal. Without valid residency, she cannot travel, have access to her bank account, and cannot even report crimes to the police.

And so, this 31-year-old Washington woman is trapped in Saudi Arabia. She cannot travel to get back home. She cannot even walk the street legally. She is a prisoner in that country.

Furthermore, according to the article, even if Vierra finds a way to leave the country, she will likely have to leave her daughter there. Because her daughter is a Saudi citizen, the little girl can only leave the country with her father’s permission.

Do you think our administration is going to help? We just stood by after that journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, was slaughtered, because every regime — be it Trump or Obama or Bush or Clinton — has such deep oil ties to the Saudis. We can talk about the kid who was held prisoner in North Korea and was eventually murdered — he was sent home alive, but in a coma, and died soon after — because we don’t have any deep financial ties to North Korea. But with Saudi Arabia, we have deep financial ties there.

So here we have a young woman from our state who is essentially a prisoner there because her ex-husband won’t give her permission to do anything and our nation won’t intervene.

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