Custody Battle Haunts Arab Woman Journalist

Custody Battle Haunts Arab Woman Journalist
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Veteran journalist Rula Amin is no stranger to tough assignments in conflict zones, but she never imagined having to dodge legal bullets to retain custody of her daughter, and lose her source of income in the process.

"My ex-husband Mohammed Ajlouni took my 7 year old daughter Dina for visitation and won't bring her back to me as court decision says," Amin wrote in a long post making the rounds on Saturday.

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Screen shot of Rula Amin's posted appeal

In a tweet she said the last time her "ex" took the girl and didn't return her, Amin didn't see Dina for 11 months.

In another tweet, Amin appealed for help to get back her daughter and for the rule of law to prevail in Jordan.

According to the custody agreement the couple take delivery of Dina during visitations at a police station so that the transaction can be documented.

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Amin tweets about 11-month disappearance

"We extended his (Ajlouni's) visitation hours under a revised agreement and I got permission to travel with Dina 18 days in summer and one week during Christmas vacation," she told me.

Come summer, Amin asked the judge to demand that her ex-husband hand over the child's passport so that they can travel.

According to Jordanian law, a mother who even has custody has no right to apply for a passport for her child, or to keep it.

The judge's answer was that the passport was the father's right, but that the mother could keep the child's insurance card.

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Screen shot of Amin's repeated appeal for help tweet

Throughout the summer Amin pushed and negotiated with the judge and ex-husband over the passport and for her to provide the required guarantor.

"I spent the whole summer trying to travel with my daughter but I failed to execute what I had the right to do, according to the same court and judge who issued the ruling," she added.

On Friday, Amin handed over Dina to spend the day with Ajlouni but he later sent a message saying he wouldn't return the girl.

Total defiance, Amin said, adding that she spent most of Saturday going to different government departments to get back her daughter, with no luck.

"A journalist should be dedicated to the profession of journalism," Amin told my students in 2011, noting that the press was like a mirror reflecting hard news without adding or subtracting facts.

She's practiced what she learned at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.

The gutsy Palestinian-Jordanian former Al Jazeera English correspondent (and one-time reporter for CNN) saw her dedication turn into a Kafkaesque nightmare in a custody battle with her ex-husband.

Ajlouni, a Jordanian-American media entrepreneur, reportedly "kidnapped" the child more than once before the latest incident and secured legal writ to bar mother and daughter from leaving the country.

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Rula Amin (Abu-Fadil)

He had accused Amin of being too busy with her work as a correspondent to attend to their daughter.

He told Lebanese daily Annahar Amin had barred him from seeing his daughter when she took the child to Lebanon where he dared not go for security reasons.

Amin disputes the contention, and says Ajlouni hadn't paid a penny for Dina's support since July 2011.

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Screen shot of Rula Amin report about 5th anniversary of Syrian war

The travel ban on U.S. passport holder Dina caused Amin to give up her Beirut-based job to set up house and stay with the child in Amman, Jordan, so as not to lose temporary custody.

The shocker came when Amin's lawyers discovered that Ajlouni got an injunction from a Sharia (Islamic law) court also blocking her from travel. Amin and her "ex" are Muslims.

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Screen shot of Amin with daughter Dina

"If my story highlights something, it's that if this happens to me, a woman with a high profile, good finances, (who) can afford to hire five lawyers, and (am) still vulnerable to all these violations, what happens to other women?" she asked rhetorically.

It also highlights how people in power, and secular people, don't dare confront arbitrary rulings of the Sharia courts and the influence of the religious establishment, she added.

The court jurisdiction tug-of-war is not new but her 2014 travel ban, about which she wasn't even informed, prevented Amin from visiting her father who lives in the Palestinian town of Ramallah after he had suffered a heart attack.

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Screen shot of Sharia Court order barring Rula Amin from travel

The ban was appealed on the basis it's unconstitutional and was later lifted. But the ban on Dina's travel remains.

In March 2015, Jordanian police picked up Amin and locked her up in a women's prison after a Sharia court reversed an earlier decision giving her temporary custody, and setting off a social media campaign after she had tweeted news of her incarceration.

Supporters set up a Facebook page to call for her release and got on all manner of media to denounce the jailing.

On Saturday, a friend of Amin's, Nisreen Alami, wondered online how anyone could override the law and judiciary and give himself the right to repeatedly violate all rulings and pledges before judges, courts and the police, and asked who would punish him.

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Screen shot of Nisreen Alami post

"I was put in prison because I refused to hand over my daughter," Amin told me.

Under Jordanian personal status law, divorced mothers are allowed to keep their children until the age of 15.

Amin was released a day after her detention, but the case demonstrated how existing laws and rulings could be overturned.

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Screen shot of Rula Amin's tweets on arrest, release from jail

According to online activist publication Jadaliyya, an earlier Sharia court ruling granted Amin custody of her child but Ajlouni filed an appeal, which was rejected. He then filed a grievance to revoke the ruling.

Jadaliyya noted that, "the appellate judge drew precedence from Egyptian rather than Jordanian law in order to justify the overturning of the initial ruling granting Rula custody. This, some observers claim, has not been done before in a Jordanian court ruling. It would thus appear that extra-judicial influence was at play."

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