The monarch’s daughters fell out of their father’s favor for speaking out against the ill treatment of women in the Persian Gulf kingdom. It is also believed that the king was angry at the girls' mother for not giving him a son.
Two of the princesses, Sahar and Jawaher, say they are being kept against their will in two mansions inside a royal compound in the city of Jeddah, along with their other two sisters – Maha and Hala. They say they have been deprived of food for over 60 days and have very little access to water.
“It’s a horrible situation, it’s a forced famine basically. They are confining us, depriving us of food and water, freedom and rights. We are struggling, we are surviving, we are resisting, we are trying our best to stay alive,” the two sisters told RT via Skype.
“How can we continue living like this? We have to take the risk of [speaking out]."
Having spent so much time deprived of freedom, they struggle to understand why they have been locked up.
“The king and his sons need to answer these questions: What are we charged with? What exactly is our crime?”
“What is the crime of 99 percent of women in this country, who are basically suffering under male guardianship? A male guardian can do whatever he wants; he can cut off everything and she is left with nothing,” they said on behalf of the female citizens of the kingdom.
“We are making these statements right now [in order to] gain our rights, our freedoms.”
Their health is slowly deteriorating. Past appeals by their mother, Alanoud Al-Fayez, for outside assistance - including from Western leaders like US President Barack Obama - have not come to fruition. But the situation cannot be helped by appealing to the Saudi government either, as it maintains that the princesses are in fact perfectly free to move around the city of Jeddah, provided they are accompanied by bodyguards.
The princesses' mother, Al-Fayez, divorced King Abdullah in 1980, consequently leaving for London in 2001. The sisters' ordeal then began around 2002. Less than one year after their mother escaped, Abdullah began tormenting his daughters.
The sisters told their mother that he drugged their food and water to keep them docile when they openly spoke against women being illegally detained and placed in mental wards.
NTJ/MB