Ramallah: The Jordanian Preventive Security Service has dismantled a professional Syrian gang which specialised in marrying Syrian minor aged girls off to Arabs of various nationalities, arresting several people.
The arrests occurred in Amman of Jordan and the practice had been known in Jordan as the ‘deal marriages’.
According to the Jordanian Al Ghad daily, the gang is led by a Syrian woman and the illegal marriages were conducted outside the Sharia courts. After the marriage, the men spend few weeks or months with the minor girls and suddenly disappear.
Security sources in Amman told the daily that the gang is led by a professional woman and four others, largely Syrian nationals who pay the father or custodian of the girl and get her to marry Arabs in deals worth huge amounts of money.
The sources said that scores of such marriages have been conducted as the gang takes advantage of the miserable conditions of Syrian refugee families in Jordan and sells their underage daughters.
The sources said that the marriage contracts are conducted outside the Sharia Courts and are fake contracts which often do not even bear the real names of the husbands. The “husbands” pay money for pleasure with minors who are not old enough to be true adults.
The security sources said that the investigations about this gang are still underway and that while a large number of these deal marriages have been discovered, there are more to be revealed.
Zeyad Hamad, who heads the Quran and Sunnah Association, said that his association has provided assistance for the Syrian minor female victims who usually approach the association to get milk for their newborn babies.
He said that hundreds of these women cannot get their children officially registered as they do not even know the names of the men they married. He added that the women also rarely know the real nationalities of those men.
He said that the minor Syrian girls have been suffering this problem in almost all the Jordanian cities.
Dr Muhanad Dwaikat, a Jordanian expert in human trafficking crimes, said that marrying minor girls (below 18 years old) in business transactions is a major and serious human trafficking crime as per what had been known as the international customs and traditions.
He said that in a society with the father in full control and with the family in miserable financial conditions, the number of such tragedies regularly rises, especially with the existence of many dealers who exploit the financial hardship of such families.
Dr Dwaikat stressed that as per the Jordanian law No. 9 for the year 2009, those involved in this kind of illegal business receive a penalty up to 10 years imprisonment with hard labour.
