Dec 21, 2017

A pair of Saudi sisters is struggling to reverse a Turkish court's decision to deport them saying they would face certain violence back home. The case has received little attention either in Turkey or abroad. But Turkey’s mass circulation daily Hurriyet splashed their story on its front page today together with a photograph of the wan-looking brunettes. The Turkish headline read, “Don’t send us to our death.”

Ashwaq Hamoud, 30, and Areej Hamoud, 28, said they left the kingdom in late February, fleeing physical abuse from male family members. The violence ranged from beatings to being locked in their room and denied food, Hurriyet reported. But a Turkish court has rejected pleas that their deportation order be overturned.

The girls were detained in Istanbul on May 16 after their father told Turkish authorities that his daughters were planning to join “terrorist groups” in Syria. Human Rights Watch, which has called attention to their case, suggested the sisters may have attracted notice when they attempted to follow up on applications for residency permits.

According to their lawyer Serdarhan Topo, the sisters’ boarding passes showed that they had attempted to flee to New Zealand on Feb. 8 via Hong Kong from Abu Dhabi. Officials who suspected their real purpose was to seek asylum, not leisure, barred them from the flight. So the women decided to go to Istanbul instead.

The sisters’ odyssey contradicts their father’s claims that they were planning to go to Syria. Until Turkey began tightening its border with Syria, which stretches more than 800 kilometers (500 miles), the country was the main transit route for foreign fighters and their families who wanted to be part of the Islamic States’ now crumbling “caliphate” and its fallen “capital” Raqqa. The sisters deny that their final destination was Syria.