18 November 2008

DOUAI - A French court on Monday quashed a decision to annul a marriage after a Muslim husband discovered his bride was not a virgin, and which had sparked a huge outcry in France.

President Nicolas Sarkozy's government had asked the appeal court in Douai in northern France to review the ruling handed down in April, touching off protests from rights groups, feminists and much of the political class.

The decision meant that the marriage sealed in a civil ceremony in July 2006 in the small northern town of Mons-en-Baroeul remained valid, even though both spouses have asked the court to release them from their vows.

The couple have two months to decide whether they want to launch a higher appeal.

"This ruling is very worrying," the husband's lawyer Xavier Labbee said.  "Our individual liberties are seriously threatened."

The husband, a computer expert in his 30s whose name was not made public, sought the annulment after realising his bride was not a virgin on the night of their marriage.

His suspected that his new bride, also a Muslim, was not a virgin on their wedding night because the bedsheets were not stained with blood.

His wife, a nurse in her 20s, admitted to him she had had pre-marital sex.

A tribunal in the northern city of Lille granted the annulment, based on the man's contention that the woman's virginity was a "determining factor" in his decision to marry her and that she had lied to him.

It said he had been misled about an "essential quality" of his bride-to-be.

Under French law, a marriage can be annulled if there has been "an error about the person or the essential qualities of the person."

But the Douai appeals court ruled that the lie did not constitute "valid grounds for the annulment of a marriage" as it did not touch on an essential quality of his bride.

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