Riyadh - The father of two young Saudi
women whose bodies were found bound together in New York last
October has dismissed a police assessment that they committed
suicide and said marks he saw on their faces indicate they were
beaten before their deaths.
Tala Farea, 16, and Rotana Farea, 23, who had previously
been living in Virginia, were found along the rocky Manhattan
shore of the Hudson River with duct tape around their waist and
ankles. A New York Police Department official has said they
likely entered the water alive and were said to have preferred
suicide over returning to Saudi Arabia.
Their mother told detectives the day before the bodies were
discovered that the Saudi Embassy in Washington had ordered the
family to leave the United States because the daughters had
applied for political asylum, the Associated Press reported in
October, citing police. An embassy spokeswoman denied that at
the time.
Saudi Arabia's rights record has come under intense scrutiny
after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents
inside the kingdom's Istanbul consulate last year
and the flight to Thailand of an 18-year-old woman who alleged
abuse by her family. The woman's family denied the allegation.
Saudi news site Sabq published an interview on Monday with
the women's father, who was not named, denying police claims
that at some earlier point they had been subjected to physical
abuse, and accusing a Virginia investigator of abducting the
women and blocking him from retrieving them.
"He told us that he had withdrawn the report and placed the
girls in a safe place," Sabq quoted the father as saying.
"We tried to communicate later with this investigator but he
refused to respond. He asked us to go to the court on the
grounds that the case had been transferred there, but when we
went, we did not find any trace of the case," the father added.
He said when he viewed his daughters' bodies at the morgue
before taking them back to Saudi Arabia, "we found bruises
filling both their faces ... especially the younger one, which
confirms they were heavily beaten before they died."
A New York Police Department spokesman declined to comment,
instead referring a reporter to the city medical examiner's
office.
"We stand by our conclusion," said Aja Worthy-Davis, a
medical examiner's spokeswoman.
Fairfax County Police in Virginia and the Saudi Embassy in
Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.