US Political Prisoner Update

TOPICS:ConstitutionHuman RightsJanet PhelanLegal

June 20, 2016

By Janet Phelan
In a recent US government human rights report, the US voiced sharp criticism of China’s treatment of human rights lawyers and dissidents. “The crackdown on the legal community was particularly severe, as individual lawyers and law firms that handled cases the government deemed ‘sensitive’ were targeted for harassment and detention,” the report stated.
The report, which is issued annually by the US State Department, failed to take note that similar repressive tactics are currently being leveled against attorneys and human rights activists in the US. In particular, the disability rights community is being hit with the disbarment of attorneys and the jailing of activists.

Why Disability Rights?

Governments generally have some kind of mechanism in place to house or otherwise care for the incompetent and infirm. State hospitals, homeless shelters and later, community board and care facilities have all provided some level of care for those under parens patriae (when the government is legal protector of those unable to protect themselves).
With a growing aging population (as of 2014 the US had over 46 million over the age of 65 – 14% of its total population), and given the incidence of dementia or Alzheimer’s-related illness in the elderly, the realities of aging have produced a trajectory of legislation, most of which results in permission to plunder and eliminate – rather than protect – the incompetent.

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, 11 % of people over 65 have Alzheimer’s. This figure balloons to over 30% for people over 85. It is estimated that 5.3 million Americans have Alzheimer’s. The rude fact is that such people have traversed beyond their productive years and are considered by some to be a burden on the entitlement programs. In a society which values youth and accomplishment, such people may be considered superfluous.
There are three official routes to the elimination/plunder and one unofficial route.
The official routes involve 1) assisted suicide laws, 2) adult guardianships and 3) hospice for non-terminally ill individuals. The unofficial route involves a previously discussed program involving “impostor” pharmaceuticals. The first three routes enable the “legal” elimination of individuals who are past their productive years. And, as is hardly surprising, there is a growing resistance, among family members and also grassroots groups, to the taking of the elderly and disabled.
The final route constitutes a “black” program and at the time of this writing, efforts to turn over evidence of the impostor pharmaceuticals to the authorities at The Hague have met with a roaring silence.

Those Who Stand to Profit are the Gatekeepers

“It was her time,” court-appointed guardian Melodie Z. Scott stated to the shocked family when she unilaterally decided to withhold life-saving antibiotics from her client, Elizabeth Fairbanks. The older woman had come down with pneumonia and Scott only ordered morphine, which represses the ability to breathe. Shortly, Elizabeth Fairbanks succumbed to what is considered a treatable illness.
There were no legal repercussions for Scott’s action.
Nor were there any legal repercussions when a Florida guardian put Corinne Bramson, an elderly Florida woman, into hospice with no terminal diagnosis. Bramson was given heavy doses of morphine and expired within ten days.
It is not news to those in the disability rights movement that such abuses are going on. So when Patty Reid’s son, Landon, who had been blind since birth but did not have any documented mental incapacity, was ordered by Judge Speiser in Broward County Court (Florida) to be remanded into an institution, Reid felt the cold chill of potential undesirable futures for her son emerge. She had custody of Landon and had been his caretaker since birth, so she did what other mothers have done when faced with the prospect of an unnecessary institutionalization – she fled the jurisdiction with her son.
In April of this year, Patty Reid was arrested and her son taken from her. She is being charged with “custody interference,” which holds a potential sentence of five years in prison. In an interview last week, Reid stated that she does not know where her son is and has been denied any contact with him since her arrest. She states that the charges make no sense as she has always had custody of her son.
While still a minor, Landon had been appointed a guardian, South Florida Guardianship. “They handled the money,” stated Reid in a recent interview, “and I took care of my son.” Landon, age 19, is no longer a minor and Reid states she cannot understand why the guardianship has not been legally terminated.
Reid’s lawyer, Sue Ann Robinson, is concerned about the legality of Reid’s arrest. According to Robinson, the probable cause affidavit, used as the official document to launch Reid’s arrest, is inaccurate. “The document says that Patty Reid missed a hearing in June, 2016,” says Robinson. “That is two months before she was arrested. You cannot arrest someone for doing something in the future.”
Reid is currently out on bail.

Taking Your Mother to Lunch is a Felony

Barbara Stone was on house arrest for close to a year for taking her mother, who was under guardianship in Florida, to Denny’s Restaurant. When Stone, who was licensed to practice law in New York, began making multiple public statements concerning the guardianship of Helen Stone, the guardian’s attorney, Roy Lustig, became irritated and facilitated Barbara’s placement in a county jail.
Stone was only able to get out of the pokey by agreeing to a gag order. She has been very quiet now for some months. According to those close to her, her mother is still being held in the guardianship.
Tim Lahrman was a bit more lucky. The arrest of the 57-year-old Indiana man on a seventeen-year-old stale and expired misdemeanor warrant had the disability rights community up in arms. Tim, who is a paralegal, had provided critical paralegal services for many who were struggling to have a family member freed from a guardianship. As Tim himself was deemed an incapacitated person, decades ago, and his own business plundered by his guardian, there were mounting legal concerns as to how he could, as an “officially designated incompetent person,” be considered legally culpable for the act of driving without a license and having a cigarette butt – which no lab report proved to contain THC – lying in the car’s ashtray.

Fill That Jail!

Oddly, Lahrman was arrested in Steuben County, Indiana, just blocks from his residence. Nevertheless, he was taken to Elkhart County and processed into their Corrections Complex. The Elkhart County Corrections Complex is a large facility which can potentially house over 1000 inmates. According to the Sheriff’s Department, it is only at about half capacity. Lahrman reports that there were numerous other individuals being housed in Elkhart County Corrections Complex who were also on decades-old misdemeanor warrants. According to news reports, other neighboring counties, including Marion County, are now shipping their arrestees over to Elkhart, apparently in a cooperative effort to swell that facility’s population.
Texas elder law attorney, Candice Schwager, an advocate for those under guardianship, set up a website freetimlahrman.org and she and attorney Katherine Hine brought Tim’s plight to the public airwaves.
In a scenario that would have given Franz Kafka a case of the giggles, and acting as his own attorney, Tim Lahrman filed his own motions with the court asserting that he was legally incompetent and unable to even act pro se as his own attorney. Lahrman was released from Elkhart County Jail last week, following a June 2nd court hearing during which the 1999/2000 in abstentia convictions against him were vacated as being void and unconstitutional.
Along the way, he spent nine days in the “hole”–solitary confinement–for telling his public defender that he was going to file a complaint against her for ineffectively representing him.

Violation of the public’s right to know

When Santa Clara County ADA David Angel refused to produce the police report which resulted in Cary Andrew Crittenden’s 2015 Christmas Day arrest, suspicions were aroused that there might be something unseemly in the report that the Assistant District Attorney was trying to keep from public purview.
ADA Angel’s patently illegal refusal was subsequently discussed in articles and also on numerous radio broadcasts. Finally, in mid-May–a full five months after the initial request was made — the public information officer for Santa Clara County Court cut loose the report.
Which has left those who have viewed this report in a state of shock. First of all, it appears that Crittenden has been charged with a felony when no felony was committed or documented as such by the police.The misdemeanor complaints concerning his “stalking” and harassing police officers also raise some questions.
In the police report, it is alleged that Crittenden sent some emails to a Detective David Carroll, accusing him of being a “corrupt cop” and that these emails also contained Carroll’s home address and that these emails were copied to other individuals, including to retired attorney Ken Ditkowsky and yours truly. However, I have no recall or record of receiving emails with Detective Carroll’s home address. Ditkowsky has also stated he has no such recollection. The Sheriff’s Department is alleging that these emails constituted publication of Carroll’s identifying information and that this “scared” him. The police report states:
“Since receiving this email, V 01 Detective Carroll has his “head on a swivel” whenever he leaves his house and is constantly worried about the safety of his family.”
After reviewing the police report, Ken Ditkowsky stated that “This document is a disgrace and as close to an admission of police wrongdoing and cover-up as can be imagined.”
Crittenden has maintained that the entire stalking charge involving Carroll is manufactured. His Facebook page, which contained evidence and allegations of corruption in Santa Clara County, has been removed.
Crittenden’s trial is set for July 11.

The Mafia also goes after family members

John Rohrer, who has been locked away in a state psychiatric hospital for nearly seven years is now going to be allowed a six month review hearing in an effort to finally gain his liberty – 15 months after his attorneys filed for it. Unlike Lahrman and Crittenden, Rohrer is locked up on the basis of a civil case, where the Ross County, Ohio prosecutor’s office has a much lower burden of proof than in a criminal case and where, despite the Ohio and federal constitutions’ guarantees of the right to jury trial in civil as well as criminal cases, Ohio judge Leonard Holzapfel and an Ohio appeal court continue to refuse to recognize that right for Rohrer.
With the Ohio Supreme Court’s May 4, 2016 refusal to consider Rohrer’s last appeal addressing due process violations, including jury trial denial, during 2014 proceedings, Holzapfel no longer had a pretext for refusing Rohrer his six month review. Soon after scheduling Rohrer’s review hearing for June 27, the Ross County prosecutor’s office filed contempt charges against Rohrer’s main supporter, Pastor Caleb Copper, for alleged child support arrearage, seeking to incarcerate Copper on June 24, rather than to wait for his medical disability to come through. Pastor Copper, who signed an affidavit of support for Rohrer, along with some 20 others in 2015, joined with seven other citizens in April, 2016 in signing affidavits charging prosecutor Jeffrey Marks and two government mental health “professionals” with perjury allegedly committed during the 2014 proceedings against Rohrer. www.m.facebook.com/Floridastatecommunitycouncil/posts/1036288719784051
Despite having never met with Rohrer, the two alleged perjurers from the state hospital lockup had given testimony that Rohrer should remain locked up due to his online criticism of their employer’s forced drugging assaults on other patients. Rohrer, a writer and composer, remains banned from all internet access.
On June 17, supporters of both Copper and Rohrer, along with other freedom groups, plan a Vigil for Liberty on the sidewalk outside the Ross County Courthouse in Chillicothe, Ohio.
Rohrer’s case appears to be retaliatory. In this case, the activist is his mother, attorney and talk show host Katherine Hine. Hine, who left the US in 2009 and currently resides in South America, has expressed concern for her own safety and liberty should she return to the US. Hine currently hosts two talk shows a week, which air on WLJAradio.net and focus on court corruption. She continues to serve as executive director of the Ross County Network for Children in Ohio.

First, They Came for Grandma

It has often been said that a country can be judged in terms of how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. After viewing the sorts of stories about abuse of the elderly and infirm that have spilled over from the internet and are beginning to be reported in mainstream papers like the Wall Street Journal, Abuse Plagues System of Legal Guardians for Adults one might come away with the impression that the US simply views its elders as bank accounts to be harvested, without any human qualities whatsoever. Those who are attempting to stand up for and protect the vulnerable are now being treated as if their rights, too, are disposable.
Some of these cases were previously reported on here The Management of Dissent: How to Destroy an Activist | New Eastern Outlook and here The Dance of Deception: The US Holocaust Museum Сaught Сovering Up Genocide | New Eastern Outlook
Image Credit: TheFreeThoughtProject.com
Janet C. Phelan, investigative journalist and human rights defender that has traveled pretty extensively over the Asian region, an author of a tell-all book EXILE, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The Management of Dissent: How to Destroy an Activist

Column: Society

Region: USA in the World

While the West, and the United States in particular, has repeatedly voiced criticism over human rights abuses in other countries, the US’s own record in terms of detaining and incarcerating dissidents is now becoming conspicuous.

In presenting a recent report on human rights issues, US Secretary of State John Kerry stated: “Here is the truth, we believe: A government that fails to respect human rights, no matter how lofty its pretentions, has very little to boast about, to teach, and very little indeed in the way of reaching its full potential.” 

This report itself is heavily weighted in terms of naming Asian and Middle Eastern countries as human rights abusers. Kerry reports that “In every part of the world, we see an accelerating trend by both state and non-state actors to close the space for civil society, to stifle media and Internet freedom, to marginalize opposition voices, and in the most extreme cases, to kill people or drive them from their homes.” 

The United States is not named in the report.

However, the US is itself a major culpable actor in such abuses. Despite its continuing and increasingly strained efforts to self-promote as a defender of human rights, the US is now inhibiting media and internet freedom as well as regularly imprisoning activists–often without trial.

The world is already aware of the use of the Espionage Act to imprison and otherwise intimidate whistleblowers. The cases of Bradley Manning, Jeffrey Sterline,  James Hitselberger,      John Kiriakou,   and others have hit the mainstream press.

What the world may not be aware of is that non-CIA connected individuals, who are merely attempting to correct and/ or broadcast injustices, are now facing jail time.

You Mean I Forgot to Tell You About Your Trial?

Tim Lahrman is a name well known to disability rights activists. A trained paralegal, Tim has been volunteering his paralegal skills to a growing list of people who are engaged in legal battles against guardians and lawyers.

For those unacquainted with the issues concerning adult guardianships, an overview reveals that these guardianships constitute a legal loophole through which an individual may be declared incompetent and then stripped of all his assets and the lion’s share of his rights. In fact, upon the initiation of such a guardianship, the alleged incapacitated person may not even be allowed to hire a lawyer to defend against the guardianship. The National Association to Stop Guardian Abuse’s website has a compelling summary of what rights are lost when one goes under aguardianship.

Robin Gibson, a Los Angeles woman, attributes Tim Lahrman’s legal expertise to the successful resolution of an ongoing legal conflict with the guardian for her mother.  Recently, the mother was released from a guardianship which Gibson states was draining her mother’s estate and wherein the guardian, Frumeh Labow, had virtually sequestered the older woman from contact with the outside world.

“I owe this all to Tim,“ pronounced an exhilarated Robin Gibson in a recent interview. “I have finally got my mother back.“

Gibson is only one of many who have benefited from Lahrman’s legal acumen and skills. And she may be one of the last. For Tim Lahrman now sits in an Indiana jail cell, held without bail on two seventeen year- old misdemeanor charges.

Candice Schwager, an attorney from Texas, has this to say about Lahrman’s incarceration: “There is an entirely different agenda behind this seventeen year old persecution. It’s not even reasonable to think that Goshen keeps misdemeanor cold case files and this was bad luck. This arrest was retribution because Tim has brought up the crimes of a clouted political figure.”

Tim Lahrman was himself placed under a guardianship in 1987. He was at that point in time in his twenties and an owner of a thriving automotive business which was subsequently ravaged through the guardianship proceedings.

Lahrman’s guardianship was never legally terminated. After sacking his business, the guardian, Kenneth Scheibenberger, “just sort of wandered off,” according to Lahrman.

This left Tim Lahrman in legal limbo. Neither his rights nor his property were ever restored to him. He was left, in essence, as a legal zero.

As the law states, Lahrman thus could not have had the “legal capacity” to commit the two misdemeanors with which he was charged in 1999 —driving with a suspended license and possession of a small amount of marijuana.

Tim filed legal notice in the misdemeanor case of his stated “lack of capacity.” The court took no notice and, after oddly failing in its legal mandate to summon him for his trial, held the trial without him present, found him guilty and sentenced him to two years. He was not present at the hearing and was not subsequently apprehended.

Fast forward to 2016. Tim is not only assisting others in their guardianship cases but has now filed a number of lawsuits in his own matter.

Filed on January 20, 2015 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, South Bend Division, Tim Lahrman also sued Elkhart County Superior Court No. 2 (Stephen R. Bowers, Judge), the Chief Judge of the Indiana Court of Appeals, the State of Indiana, the Office of Indiana Attorney General and the Indiana Supreme Court Division of State Court Administration. Lahrman was picked up in March of this year on the seventeen year- old stale and expired warrant, and is being held in Elkhart County Jail without bail. His writ of Habeas Corpus, filed with the court this past week, was reportedly denied by Judge Bodie Stegelmann. According to reports, Judge Stegelmann has ordered Lahrman into a psychiatric evaluation.

Attorney Schwager, who has filed notice in this case, states that Tim was put into “the hole”—solitary confinement—this past week after asking his public defender for her name and also requesting the court file. The request apparently frightened her. Schwager has more on the case.

The public defender subsequently withdrew and the judge has ordered Tim to appear pro se—without legal counsel.

I Don’t Know You But I Am Sure You Are Incompetent

Another disability rights activist, Cary Andrew Crittenden, is now being held in Santa Clara County Jail, in Northern California, after being arrested on Christmas Eve on “secret charges.”

We can only term the charges “secret” because the Santa Clara County Prosecutor’s office has consistently refused to honor its legal responsibility to release the records containing the factual circumstances surrounding Crittenden’s arrest. The California Public Records Act, clarified by the court case known as “Kusar” mandates the release of these records.

Crittenden, who has launched an internet campaign against corruption in Santa Clara County was previously arrested in Santa Clara County for making online statements about public officials which were deemed to be “harassment.”

An internal affairs complaint was filed on February 11 with the Prosecutor’s office concerning the refusal of Assistant District Attorney David Angel to comply with the records disclosure law, which is in place in order to guard against “secret arrests.” This IA complaint appears to have gone the way of the public’s rights to know—into the garbage can. No action has been taken on the complaint.

The recipient of the complaint, a Lt. Jorge Perez, who states he is an investigator with the DA’s office, has refused to even release the name of the individual who has been assigned to investigate the complaint concerning ADA David Angel’s refusal to comply with the law.

Recently, there was an attempt to have Crittenden declared incompetent to stand trial. If an individual is so deemed, he may be incarcerated indefinitely without ever having his day in court. Sniffing this rat, Crittenden refused to attend the psychiatric evaluation which the court had set up for him.

In a bizarre, Kafkaesque effort, a “doctor” –who never saw or evaluated Cary Andrew Crittenden–trotted himself into court. In a declaration that would have made any surrealist proud, Dr. Burke, the “doc-in the pocket” of the court, intoned that in his professional opinion, Crittenden, a man he had never seen, was “incompetent to stand trial.”

The fact that Burke had never evaluated Crittenden did not escape the attention of the court, however. Crittenden was ordered into another evaluation, and the subsequent medical professional reportedly determined that Crittenden was indeed competent.

The propensity for courts now to order activists and dissidents into psychiatric evaluation is something that deserves special attention. A person adjudicated incompetent by a court may, in fact, never get a trial. He can be locked up indefinitely on minor and potentially bogus charges and also be court- ordered to be forcibly  medicated with anti- psychotics, which constitute a chemical strait jacket.

If you think that the cases involving Lahrman and Crittenden are the exception, you may rest assured that, for cases involving guardianship activists, this is standard court operating procedure. Rosanna Miller, who was attempting to protect her father’s interests while he was under guardianship, was arrested in 2014 for failure to pay court costs. The Ohio Supreme Court, however, had issued a memo stating that an individual cannot be arrested for failure to pay court costs.

Questions were raised about the possibility that the Bellafontaine judge, Ann Beck, was involved in a number of financial improprieties. Beck then quickly released Miller from custody. Barbara Stone, a NY attorney whose mother, Helen, was under a questionable guardianship in Florida, was arrested and charged with “custody interference”—which mandates a potential sentence of five years in prison—for allegedly taking her mother to lunch.

If I Can’t Get You, I’ll Get Your Kid

The psychiatric incarceration of John Rohrer raises further questions about motives to detain this young man, and detain him possibly indefinitely.  Rohrer, who apparently wandered into the wrong house while under the influence of a hallucinogen, has now been detained over ten years, the last six and a half years as an in-patient in a state psychiatric facility. The case has been fraught with illegal maneuvers by the prosecutors and judge, including denying him his right multiple times to hearings to determine whether he meets the state’s definition of being “mentally ill.” In fact, Rohrer has never been deemed incompetent. Rohrer is now being held at Appalachian Behavioral Healthcare, a State psychiatric hospital, where he was forcibly drugged for years.

It should be noted that the Ohio Supreme Court has determined that a judge may not order forced drugging unless he makes a finding that the individual lacks capacity to consent. The forced drugging must also be in the patient’s “best interests” and there must not be any alternatives deemed to be as effective as the drugging. In the Rohrer case, Judge Corzine made none of these findings, and in fact stated on the record that Rohrer appeared “pretty lucid today.”

Nevertheless, Corzine ordered the forced drugging of John Rohrer.

According to reports, during a brief 2007 exposure to Risperdal, Rohrer, who was at that time 27 years old, suffered a cardiac event, but this did not stop it from being chosen as the primary drug to forcibly inject.

Medical and legal malpractice complaints were filed November 24, 2014 in the Ohio Court of Claims and November 28, 2014 in the Franklin County Common Pleas Court by the attorney for John Rohrer. The complaint states that Rohrer was forcibly injected with Risperdal for more than 3 ½ years although the drug is known to cause irreversible brain damage. In addition, the complaint states that Rohrer’s rights to a fair hearing have been repeatedly violated.

The activist in the Rohrer case is actually his mother. Attorney and talk show host Katherine Hine founded the advocacy group Stop Child Abuse Now in Oklahoma and advised a group of foster mothers who were outraged at the involvement of judges and lawyers in the murder of 2 year old Ryan Luke in 1995. She is the Executive Director of the Ross County Network for Children in Ohio, an organization with a strong history of conflict with the Ross County Prosecutors, surrounding two child murderers that the County had not wanted prosecuted back in the 1990’s.

Hine is now with WJLA radio hosting a two weekly broadcasts—one exposing illegalities of forced psychiatry and another exposing the consequences of the lack of judicial accountability. She also is a contributor to The Columbus Free Press.

The Ross County Prosecutor’s office has made it clear that they despise her. Now, they are the ones making sure John Rohrer stays locked up.

Hine has faced three disciplinary actions.  She writes, “My first discipline was in Oklahoma in like 1981 or 1982 when my soon to be ex grabbed by children in violation of an Oklahoma custody order giving their temporary custody to me.” According to Hine, “He claimed he wasn’t served.” She reports that “I got a private reprimand – where you go into an office and they yell at you about 15 minutes.  Told me what a disgrace to the profession I was and how ashamed they all were of being in the bar association with me.”

She was subsequently reprimanded by the Oklahoma Bar in 1997 for communicating with a judge concerning a matter involving a suspected case of child abuse, in which she did not represent a party. In fact, Hine had signed a letter along with seven other individuals who were concerned that the judge had authorized supervised visitation of a child with a sexual predator and that the supervision stipulation was being ignored. In other words, the child was allowed to be alone with the predator. There was another attempt at discipline when she was accused of ghost writing for a pro se litigant, but Hine invoked confidentiality and the complaint evaporated.

Concerning the lengthy incarceration of her son, Katherine Hine has this to say: “These people are like the Cosa Nostra. They launch intergenerational vendettas and will go after your family.”

According to Hine, John Rohrer is no longer allowed online. He had previously set up websites with his music and poetry but the public awareness of his situation had launched protests among his readers and as a result, he is now barred by the hospital from going onto the internet.

Recent articles have discussed the increasing incidence of suspension and disciplinary actions taken against attorneys who are attempting to protect the rights of individuals. If the current trend continues, we may see anyone standing up for the rights of another individual escorted into jail and, from there, potentially into a rubber room.

Janet C. Phelan, investigative journalist and human rights defender that has traveled pretty extensively over the Asian region, an author of a tell-all book EXILE, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

http://journal-neo.org/2016/04/24/the-management-of-dissent-how-to-destroy-an-activist/

First female law firm opens in Saudi Arabia

Editor's note: Let's hear it for the bravest lawyers in the world...  Lucius Verenus, Schoolmaster,  ProbateSharks.com

 

First female law firm opens in Saudi Arabia

Published time: January 03, 2014 02:21
Edited time: January 04, 2014 18:50

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AFP Photo / Hassan Ammar

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Human rights, Law, Opposition, Religion, Saudi Arabia

The country’s first female law firm has opened its doors to protect women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, two months after its founder along with three other female lawyers were granted licenses to practice law in the traditionally patriarchal kingdom.
Now Saudi women can seek help, advice and legal aid from Bayan Mahmoud Al Zahran, the first Saudi woman lawyer who launched the female law firm in Jeddah.
Zahran told Arab News that her law firm is ready to fight for the rights of Saudi women and relate women’s cases to the court, a task which her male counterparts at times cannot understand or handle.
“I believe women lawyers can contribute a lot to the legal system. This law firm will make a difference in the history of court cases and female disputes in the Kingdom. I am very hopeful and thank everyone who supported me in taking this historical step,” Zahran said.
The lawyer also stressed that she is eager to work on labor cases and business disputes involving women but will work with both genders.
“Our activity is not restricted to cases involving only women. Saudi Arabia’s legal system treats men and women equally and a lawyer has the right to represent men and women,” Zahran told Al Arabiya News Channel on Thursday.
The launch was attended by a number of Saudi officials and members from the NGO community, including Mazen Batterjee, vice president of Jeddah Chamber of Commerce.
Batterjee stressed the importance of Shariah law Saudi courts, adding that female attorneys should follow the restrictions of the court for hijab while presenting themselves before a judge.
Zahran’s father, Sheikh Mahmoud Al-Zahran, praised his daughter’s efforts.
“We are very proud of our daughter who stands firm for protection of women’s rights. This will help all women who couldn’t go and speak to male lawyers about their problems,” he said.
Zahran hopes that her firm’s example will lead to more female lawyers.
“This is a very positive step toward the Saudi court and justices as right now, we are four female lawyers who got the license, but I am hopeful that in future, the number will increase,” she added.

Bayan Zahran

Bayan Zahran, Jihan Qurban, Sarra Al Omari and Ameera Quqani became the first female legal representatives in Saudi Arabia in October, when the country issues licenses, allowing them to change their status from legal consultants to attorneys, thus lifting the ban imposed on female law graduates to practice.
The initial plan of the justice ministry was to allocate licenses to family status cases, but the final decision did not impose any limits on fields of law practice.
Conditions to obtain the license are the same for men and women and include a university degree in law and three years of training.
Women in the ultra-conservative Kingdom of Saudi Arabia usually maintain a traditional place inside the household. Many details in the lives of Saudi women are closely regulated by Sharia law derived from the Koran.
Every adult woman is required to have a close male relative as her ‘guardian’, who is authorized to make a number of decisions on a woman's behalf, including the right to travel, to start a business, and study at university. Saudi women are prohibited from driving, and are required to cover themselves in public, among other restrictions.
Last October, Saudi women embarked on unprecedented protest measure, by defying kingdom's de facto ban on women driving by getting behind the steering wheel.
As part of the October 26th Women's Driving Campaign, around 60 women got behind their vehicles, some brave enough have even posted their experience on YouTube.
The declaration on the website oct26driving.com has been signed by over 11,000 women.
“Physiological science and functional medicine [found that driving] automatically affects ovaries and rolls up the pelvis,” Sheikh Saleh bin Saad al Luhaydan, judicial and psychological consultant to the Gulf Psychological Association, said in reaction to the issue.
He added that the women who drive give birth to children “with clinical disorders of varying degrees.”
Many Saudis have expressed their anger in Twitter, mocking the Sheikh’s “great scientific discoveries.”