Annulled non-virgin marriage "un-annulled" for the moment

An appeals court in the northern French town of Douai has decided to suspend the annulment of a marriage which a Moslem couple had requested because the wife had lied about being a virgin.

The case made national headlines here in France a few weeks ago when the story first broke and now it's back in the news again after the appeals court's decision to suspend the verdict.

It involves a man who suspected that his bride – also a Moslem – had lied about being a virgin before they were married in 2006.

His wife at first assured him she was “pure” but later revealed that she had indeed had sex before marriage. The wife returned to her family “in disgrace” and although she was initially reluctant to assent to her husband’s request to seek an annulment, she eventually agreed.

In April a judge in the northern French city of Lille granted the couple’s request for an annulment on the grounds that the man had been "mistaken about the essential qualities" of his wife-to-be. Such a term of course leaves the door wide open for a myriad of potential interpretations.

The media didn’t actually get wind of the story until the end of May but not surprisingly once it broke it created an uproar with many politicians, women’s rights campaigners and leading French Moslem figures denouncing the court's ruling as both a breach of a woman’s privacy and an offence – in legal terms – to the equality of men and women.

While the debate raged the French justice minister, Rachida Dati, seemed to say very little and do even less.

Dati - herself of North African origin and with an arranged and annulled marriage behind her - appeared almost paralysed by the furore that ensued. And it wasn't until her immediate boss, the prime minister François Fillon, stepped in that Dati did a volte face and asked the public prosecutors office to appeal the original ruling.

Fillon suggested that annulling a marriage on grounds of virginity was tantamount to taking France – a secular country - back in time and he didn’t want “people one day to be able to make virginity a constitutional element of marital consent."

In purely judicial terms there is now the seemingly ridiculous situation of the couple being "married" again even though the original annulment had been made with the agreement of both.

A final decision is expected in September and until then they are in marital limbo.

Should the court overturn the original annulment the only option left open to the couple would be the potentially lengthy and costly process of obtaining a divorce.