IT was a life out of a fairytale — until it became one they couldn’t escape.
Sahar, Maha, Hala and Jawaher Al Saud are daughters of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, the Saudi Arabian monarch who is worth an estimated $15billion.
With such riches, the sisters, when younger, would take ski trips to luxurious resorts in Europe and go on endless shopping sprees, buying silk robes and jasmine oil, while their doting father bought them parures — matching jewellery sets — topped with jewel-encrusted tiaras.
Each of them desired a normal, albeit privileged life. Now they are prisoners.
Not only has the king forbidden any man to seek his daughters’ hands in marriage, he’s confined them, against their will, in separate dark and suffocating quarters at his palace.
His eldest daughter, Ms Sahar,42, spoke with The Post in a rare and surreptitious phone call.
“We are cut off and isolated and alone. We are hostages. No one can come see us, and we can’t go see anyone. Our father is responsible and his sons, our half-brothers, are both culprits in this tragedy,” she said.
Their mother, Alanoud Al Fayez, long ago fled to London. Doctors aren’t even allowed in for check-ups.
Ms Sahar says the king is starving them all to death. They haven’t had a full meal in more than a month and are forced to eat canned goods that they pry open with nail files.
“Our energy is quite low, and we’re trying our best to survive,” Ms Sahar says.
“His hatred stems from their outspokenness,” Ms Al Fayez says. “But from the beginning, even when he paid attention to them, he was angry that I didn’t give him sons. The fact that they are like me bothered him.”
Ms Al Fayez says she’s had little help in trying to secure her daughters’ release. She’s hired British and American lawyers, but King Abdullah has refused to be questioned.
“We know that the daughters have gone for 30 days without any food or water,” says Ali Al-Ahmed, the director of the human-rights group Institute for Gulf Affairs and a former Saudi political prisoner himself.
Ms Al Fayez is frantic. Time, she says, is running out.
“My daughters want the right to see their mother, and I want to see my daughters. They are just trying to hold onto their sanity. They are suffering … with no hope for salvation.”
