world

Updated: Mar 09, 2014 20:43 IST

Two Saudi Arabian princesses have written to a British newspaper that they have been held against their will in a palace compound in Jeddah for the past 13 years.

The Sunday Times reported that princesses Sahar, 42, and Jawaher, 38, have appealed for help in emails and phone calls to the newspaper from their closely-guarded villa.

"We slowly watch each other fade into nothingness," says an email sent by the sisters to Sunday Times.

The two sisters have told the newspaper that their sister, Hala, 39, who is being held in another villa, "feels her mind is slipping away".

A fourth sister, Maha, 41, is also held in another villa in the palace compound, the Sunday Times said, quoting Sahar and Jawaher.

Jerusalem Post said their mother, Alanoud Alfaye, King Abdullah's former wife, has told the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) that her daughters are "imprisoned, held against their will, cut off from the world."

Their half-brother was reportedly put in charge of them by the king and he monitors them, giving them permission to leave the palace only to bring groceries, she has told the rights body.

Alfaye wrote to the UN's human rights agency, asking them to intervene, the Sunday Times reported.

Alfayez married the ruler, who has 38 children by a number of wives, when she was 15-years-old. He was in his 40s and together they had four daughters. They eventually divorced.