By Iqbal Tamimi
A Kuwaiti man trying to regain custody of his children accused his ex-wife of having relationships with two thousand men, basing his accusation on her activity on Facebook and Twitter. He provided the court of snapshots of her pages on both websites to prove her misbehaviour and inadequacy to care for her children, especially as he claims most of those who follow her on Twitter and Facebook are men.
A lawyer specialist in social disputes, declined to reveal his name, told the Kuwait News Agency that the documents provided by his client, related to the custody case filed against his client’s ex-wife, contains papers copied from the computer as evidence. Claiming those pages reveal that the number of her friends on Facebook is more than 1200 people, 1,000 of whom are men, and the number of those who follow her on Twitter are 890 people of whom 800 are men.
The lawyer said on behalf of his client that her activity online "means that my ex-wife is talking with two thousand men and publishes her photos for everyone on the website to see them, and that her friends and anyone else around the world can see them". He expressed his confidence that this can be used at the court as evidence of her lack of eligibility for the custody of their three children, whose ages range between 4 and 9 years.
The man told his lawyer that he was following up his ex-wife’s twittering activities and that he copied them all as evidence, and he copied all her interaction online as well, most of which were with men from Kuwait and overseas, where he claims, she was discussing trivial and silly things and gets into arguments and discussion with this person and that. He claims some of her tweets continued until early hours of dawn. "What kind of mother who keeps talking with total strangers and discussing things with men until the morning, while she is supposed to be taking care of 3 children.” he asked.
He said, ‘if she remains awake all night tweeting and interacting on Facebook, when is she going to get up in the morning to take care of her three little children and when she will have the time to set with them if she is always preoccupied with social networking online’.
The lawyer admitted that this is his first time filing a lawsuit where extracts from Facebook and Twitter are used as evidence of illegibility for custody, and that he does not know the impact of such procedure on the case, which he began its proceedings last week.
‘If the case was accepted by the Court, this would be the first incident where Website content is accepted as evidence in a custody case in Kuwait’ the lawyer said.