Fraudulent ties Woman jailed for forging marriage to Gulf man and claiming his child

TDT | Manama

Email: mail@newsofbahrain.com

An African woman who forged a marriage certificate to claim a Gulf man as her husband and father of her child has been sentenced to three years in prison and will be deported.

The forged document, bearing an authentic stamp from the Foreign Ministry, was used in both criminal and Sharia court proceedings to back claims of a marriage that never took place.

The High Criminal Court also ordered the forged certificate to be seized.

The woman had presented it to judges in an effort to prove the man was her husband.

The pair had met about a year earlier during one of his visits to Bahrain, and she would visit him regularly at his flat while he was in the country.

Theft

The matter first reached the authorities after the man filed a theft report, saying she had stolen items from his accommodation.

That led to criminal charges and a conviction. But he later discovered she had been released and had gone on to present the supposed marriage contract to the Court of Appeal.

She then filed a personal status case using the same document to argue not only that they were married but that the man was the father of her child.

He denied ever marrying her and said no contract had ever been signed.

Forgery

The Public Prosecution charged the 34-year-old African woman with forging an official document, a marriage certificate allegedly issued in an African country and certified by Bahrain’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

She was accused of fabricating the document and knowingly using it as genuine.

A forensic expert concluded that both signatures on the contract, the one said to be hers and the one attributed to the man, had been written by her.

The Foreign Ministry confirmed that the stamp on the document was genuine and had been issued through the proper channels.

Authenticity However, it clarified that the authenticity of the stamp did not extend to the truth of the document’s contents.

The court found she had knowingly used forged documents in both criminal and family court cases in an attempt to force recognition of a false marriage and paternity.

The forged contract was confiscated and she was convicted of fraud and forgery