She was married to him for 25 years believing he was a Saudi, but she now claims her husband was from Yemen and had fooled her all those years with forged Saudi identity documents. This is the extraordinary claim from a Saudi woman, Muzhirah Al-Katherie, about the man she knew for more than two decades as Ahmad Salmin Al-Majrashi. This was the name he used on the forged identity document. She later discovered that his real name was Ahmad Hassan Mabrook. Majrashi is a large Jizan tribe. Al-Katherie comes from a family in Ardiyah in the Baha region, some 400 km southwest of Jeddah, in the Tihama Valley. She said her husband went missing six years ago after a car crash, leaving behind a family of nine children - four males and five females. It was then found that the father had carried a fake Saudi ID. “He disappeared after the accident and there was no trace of him,” said Awad, a son of the missing man. The family has received conflicting news about the father. “Some said he was deported to Yemen, and some said he had died,” he said. “But he has disappeared and our future has become uncertain,” Awad added. If the court rules that the father is officially missing, this would allow the family to legally inherit from him and for the mother to annul the marriage. “He deceived all of us with his forged ID,” said Al-Katherie about her missing husband. “We found out the name on the forged ID belonged to a man in Riyadh,” she said. Ahmad, who did not change his first name, has now left the family in a fix, she said. “His children don't know if they are Saudis or Yemenis. They know that they have a long legal battle ahead of them,” she said. The four young men are not able to get jobs because they do not have official ID cards. The girls have been denied marriage for the same reason. “They are going to be spinsters soon,” she said. The family said that they approached the Yemeni Embassy for passports but were refused because they needed official national identity documents, she said. Except for the mother, the family does not officially belong to any nationality, the members stated in their complaint to the Human Rights Commission (HRC). Hussein Al-Shareef, chairman of the HRC, said that they are looking into the case with the help of various government departments.
