A Saudi father sent his daughter chilling photos of two Saudi women who were found dead in their Sydney apartment after she refused to return to Saudi Arabia to marry her cousin.
In a threatening text message, the father asked if the images frightened her, warning, “I swear to God I will kill you, I will bury you, and no one will know.”
The bodies of Asra Abdullah Alsehli, 24, and Amaal Abdullah Alsehli, 23, were discovered in their Canterbury flat in June 2022, after they fled Saudi Arabia in 2015 with only $5,000. The sisters, who had active asylum claims, were believed to be living in fear.
Despite the shock surrounding their deaths, the father threatened his daughter with a similar fate after she left Saudi Arabia to study in Australia. He demanded she return to marry her cousin but she refused, and was later joined by her mother and three younger sisters in Australia.
The father’s ominous message, sent in Arabic along with the photographs, read: “You thought you wouldn’t get it! Is the image scary? It will come true, I swear to God I will k!ll you, I will bury you, and no one will know. I will come soon and see you. This is your destiny and it will be at my own hands.”
The message surfaced during the Administrative Appeals Tribunal’s decision to overturn a Home Office denial of the woman’s protection visa. Her three sisters and mother were also granted visas.
The court also heard that the eldest sister had been raped before fleeing Saudi Arabia and feared she would be killed for not being a virgin before marriage. Coming from a privileged family in Jeddah, her parents had separated, but her father-maintained control of the family home.
The woman first arrived in Australia on a student visa in 2012, accompanied by her father for several months, before applying for asylum in 2015.
