The National Campaign to Increase the Age of Custody for the Shiite Sect staged a sit-in yesterday in front of the Jaafari Court in the UNESCO area, Beirut to pressure for overturning a ruling issued by Judge Bashir Mortada to deprive Abir Khashab of her twin boys and granting custody to their socially privileged father, (https://bit.ly/34Rn7VM). Under the motto ‘floor to floor’, women demonstrators deliberately changed the strategies of protest from passive demands to accelerate the issuance of appeals and raise the custody age, to seeking to defame Sharia judges who misjudge their anguish and suffering, requesting them to step down, resign or retreat. Demonstrators tried to enter the Court building to meet Mortada and the head of the Court, Mohamad Kanaan, but the security forces formed a solid barrier to block their repeated attempts. The head of the Campaign, Zeina Ibrahim, told Al Akhbar that the Inspector General of the Sharia Courts, Judge Hassan Shami, spoke to the protestors at the end of their sit-in pledging to settle the case of Khashab against Mortada next Monday. Ibrahim said she expected the decision to be a disciplinary measure to pressurize for repealing Mortada’s ruling. She finally asked the Supreme Islamic Shiite Council to remove Mortada as he proved incompetent to rule in similar cases and to be a lesson learnt for every Jaafari judge under the influence of political nepotism. (Al Akhbar, December 29, 2020)