A great-grandmother has been told she cannot marry her 21-year-old Tunisian lover because
officials believe she is the victim of an immigration scam.
The pensioner, aged 71, meet her lover on the internet three years ago and says love blossomed despite the 50 year age gap between them.
Both of them love rap music and country walks, she said, and filed an application to marry in her native Switzerland five days after she flew to meet him for the first time.
The young shopkeeper – who told officials he earned £50 a month – said the age gap ‘didn’t pose any problems’ for him because he didn’t want to have children.
But Swiss authorities in the city of Vaud refused permission for them to marry because they said the marriage would be a sham, and the man was using ’emotional fraud with the aim of migration’.
The woman, who has not been named, told 20 Minutes newspaper she met her fiance in an Internet chatroom when he was just 18.
She flew to Tunisia last August so they could meet in person, and less than a week later lodged a request to marry at the Swiss Embassy in Tunis.
The retired secretary told the paper: ‘We recognised each other immediately when I met him at the airport. But he didn’t kiss me because that’s not allowed there. ‘He took me to a house 250km from Tunis, where his family live selling goats and sheep.
‘He called me ‘his life’. I can’t live without him.’ The man, speaking from Tunisia, added after the court ruling: ‘I am very disappointed. The age gap is not a problem for me because I don’t want to have children.
‘I introduced her to my family and my sister gave her a Koran. I love her and I want to live with her.’
