Saudi sisters' suspicious deaths -- MEA CULPA

I am glad, now, that when I wrote "Saudi sisters' suspicious 'suicide'" (WWW 31/10/18) I didn't use the old joke ending "Worst case of suicide I ever saw." It turns out -- and this is my apology to the family of Tala and Rotana Farea -- that their deaths were not affairs of "honour" after all. New York City police are now saying that the girl, found dead on the banks of the Hudson River on 24 October, preferred suicide over returning to Saudi Arabia. Let that sink in....

NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said sources in Virginia, where the Farea sisters had previously been living, informed investigators that the two women had been in the United States for two to three years and would "rather inflict harm on themselves and commit suicide than return to Saudi Arabia.... Everything that we’ve seen thus far is pointing to something other than a crime taking place," he said at a presser this afternoon, "but we're not ruling anything out."

Chief Shea went on to say that detectives believe the women may have applied for asylum in the USA after alleging that they were victims of abuse. A witness told police he saw the women in a park on West 158th Street in Upper Manhattan on the morning of October 24th, while he was out exercising. They were sitting about 30 feet apart with their heads in their hands and appeared to be praying, the witness said. They were seen floating along the Hudson River that afternoon.

The sisters, whose bodies were loosely bound together with duct tape, were found lying on rocks near the river, fully clothed in black jackets with fur trim and black leggings. There were no obvious signs of trauma, and detectives believe the women were alive when they entered the water. Their bodies are believed to have washed ashore with the tide and stayed when it went out, said Chief Shea. The investigation continues, and the medical examiner's office will ultimately determine the cause of the girls' deaths.

Saudi sisters' suspicious "suicide"

Amidst all the fuss about pipe bombs and the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre, the lamestream meeja seem to have pretty much ignored the strange case of Tala Farea and Rotana Farea, two sisters whose fully-clothed bodies were found on the bank of the Hudson River in New York on October 24th.

The girls, aged 16 and 22 respectively, had been bound together, face-to-face, with the handyman's secret weapon -- duct tape. The medical examiner's office is investigating the cause of death. The absence of any obvious signs of physical trauma cast doubt on the coppers' original theory that they jumped into the river from the George Washington Bridge in a suicide pact.

The Farea sisters moved to the USA from Saudi Arabia with their mother in 2015, settling in Fairfax VA, about 225 miles from where their bodies were found. Rotana was enrolled at George Mason University, but left in the spring. Police said the sisters left the family home and were placed in a shelter after an earlier disappearance, in December of 2017. They were reported missing again on August 24th.

New York police said their mother told detectives the day before the bodies were discovered, she received a call from an official at the Saudi Arabian Embassy, ordering the family to leave the USA because her daughters had applied for political asylum. The Saudi Consul General said embassy officials in Washington had contacted the family and "extended its support and aid in this trying time." It said the sisters were students "accompanying their brother in Washington."

The cops sent a detective to Virginia to learn more about the sisters. Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea said they were particularly interested in finding out what happened since they were reported missing and what led them to New York City. "We are looking at all clues in their past life," Shea said.

Walt suggests that the police consider the girls' ethnicity and religion, and the sad fate of other Muslim girls who have come to western countries with their parents, and then been killed for wanting to adopt western customs, like wearing western clothes and (horrors!) dating. Three cases, reported here on WWW, come to mind.

In 2009 there was the murder, in Ontario, Canada, of Aqsa Parvez, aged 16, whose father and brother killed her because she dared to change out of Islamic garments into western clothes when she went to school. See "Honour killings, family values and 'accommodation'", WWW 23/7/09.

There was an echo from Britain in 2012, when a jury found the Pakistani parents of 17-year-old Shafilea Ahmed guilty of her murder. According her sister, her mother and father suffocated the girl with a plastic bag for "being too western". See "Parents kill rebellious teen to preserve family honour", WWW 3/8/12.

That same year saw the horrific Shafia case, in which three sisters and their mother were locked in a car which was pushed into a canal near Kingston ON by the girls' father, his second wife and their brother, all of whom were convicted of murder and are (suprisingly) still guests of Her Majesty in Canadian prisons. See "GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY in Shafia honour killings", WWW 29/1/12.

There's also [That's enough Islamic honour killings. We're running out of space! Ed.] OK then, let's just leave it at my suggestion that the police have a word with the Farea sisters' brother. Perhaps he can explain how it's possible for two people to duct-tape themselves together, face-to-face, while allowing sufficient freedom of movement to jump in a river. Stay tuned...