The father of two young Saudi sisters whose bodies, bound together, were discovered on the Hudson River’s Manhattan shore in October last year has rejected the New York Police Department’s assessment that they committed suicide.
The father, who is unnamed, said the marks and bruises he saw on the faces of daughters indicates they were beaten before they died, Reuters reported.
The police said the bodies of Tala Farea, 16, and Rotana Farea, 23, were found with duct tape around their waist and ankles.
A NYPD official said it is likely the young women went into the river alive, and decided to kill themselves rather than going back to Saudi Arabia.
The mother of the girls, who is also unnamed, told detectives the Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC ordered the family to leave the United States the day before the sisters were found dead. The embassy allegedly claimed the daughters applied for political asylum, the Associated Press reported.
A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy denied the allegation in October 2018.
On Monday, Sabq, a Saudi newspaper, published an interview with the women’s father where he reportedly dismissed the police’s conclusion, claiming his daughters were physically abused before their deaths. He also accused an investigator in Virginia of abducting his daughters and preventing him from retrieving them.
The father said when he saw his daughters’ bodies at the morgue before returning them to Saudi Arabia, he found “bruises filling both their faces... especially the younger one, which confirms they were heavily beaten before they died."
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