Bizarro Law

Yesterday's Gulf News reports that a Filipino man named Joseph Aboutan whose wife died in a car accident while he was driving has been held in jail for more than a year because he cannot pay "blood money" to his wife's family and his children. A court ordered the man to pay Dh200,000 ($56,000) to his own children (two boys aged 14 and 13 and a girl aged 11) and to his wife's family. Apparently under UAE law the father will not be released until he pays the blood money. He says he is poor and will not be able to pay the blood money even if he spends all his life in jail. He converted to Islam while in jail, taking Abdullah as his new name, and says what happened to him is his destiny and he is happy for becoming a Muslim.

"Blood money" commonly refers to the money paid by a murderer to the family of his victim. This assumes that a murder has been committed. While the circumstances are not explained, Aboutan was jailed after the accident and later found guilty of causing his wife's death, a case of what we would call manslaughter or vehicular homicide, which does not involve premeditation or intent, a lesser offense than other types of homicide. Apparently the type of homicide makes no difference in the UAE. The National reported in June that that Indian community is raising money to set up a fund to help expatriate Indians who are stuck in jail for failing to pay blood money, usually after traffic accidents.

My husband has warned me that we could be liable for paying blood money if we accidentally kill someone in a car accident. Perhaps it's covered by insurance? At least we can afford it, assuming it's a set sum and not based on wealth of the victim. What makes the Aboutan case so crazy is that it involves his own in-laws and children seeking the payment. I suspect a heartbroken and/or spiteful mother-in-law, who in this case now has custody of the children.

Another equally bizarre case shares space on the same page of yesterday's Gulf News. This report tells of a Pakistani taxi driver accused of beating his passenger to death. The driver picked up an Asian passenger who became unresponsive and could not say where he wanted to go so the driver called paramedics. When paramedics could find nothing wrong with the passenger, the police began to question them for calling an ambulance for no reason. The passenger became very angry and started to beat the driver, who pushed him away. Apparently the passenger was under treatment for his heart, which couldn't take the pressure of the push, and the man went into cardiac arrest and died. Now the driver is being charged with beating his passenger to death. No good deed goes unpunished, goes the saying. Let's hope truth and justice prevail in this one, but I will stay tuned.

Cases like these seem rare, but not unusual, and I applaud the Gulf News for reporting them if only to shed light on what is happening. The system of justice here seems strange to me, but then I didn't grow up with it and haven't studied it. Our system of justice in the USA certainly is not immune to the occasional travesty or miscarriage of justice. At least we don't have debtors' prisons, with never ending jail terms for the poor. Then again, our jails are so full that we have to let hardened criminals go for lack of space. And we have a lot more crime. Surely there's something to be learned from both sides, if we can manage to keep the light on.