Saudi women look at jewelry at a gold fair in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, March 21, 2009.
Saudi women look at jewelry at a gold fair in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, March 21, 2009. Photo by AP

Saudi Arabia's Justice Ministry has come across 10 cases where women impersonated other women in courts last year.
Most of the cases were related to family matters, sources told the Al-Watan daily, which reported on the issue last week. Some men have asked female relatives to impersonate their wives or other family members in order to withdraw cases against them in courts. Mostly the cases were related to issues such as divorce, alimony and inheritance.
General courts in Jeddah, Riyadh, Dammam and Makkah have found that in a number of cases women were unaware that cases they had brought against their husbands were withdrawn.
According to one lawyer cited by Al-Watan, Khaled Saeed Al-Shahrani, men have used other women to impersonate their wives in order to sell property or close inheritance cases.
Al-Shahrani said that one man asked a female relative to impersonate his wife in order to withdraw the divorce she filed against him. In another case, a man asked his sister to impersonate his wife to ask for early retirement from her job at the Ministry of Education. The man wanted his wife to leave the job, the lawyer said.
"Luckily, the real wife was able to stop the ploy after she received a call from the department of education," Al-Watan cited him as saying.
To ensure the impersonation works, the men reach agreements with witnesses who vouch for these women being who they say they are in courts.
If caught, impersonators will be tried for forgery and identity theft, the lawyer said, adding that the ministry should expedite a project for fingerprinting women in courts to deal with the problem.