Updated: 8:03 a.m. EST December 18, 2001
Princess Buniah al-Saud, the niece of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, was being held without bond at the Orange County Jail for beating Memet Ismiyati, her Indonesian maid.
The princess could receive 15 years in prison if convicted of the second-degree felony.
Neighbors called 911 Friday after Ismiyati, 36, ran crying from the apartment she shared with the princess in Orange County. She told deputies al-Saud beat her, hit her head against a wall and pushed her down a flight of stairs, leaving her unable to walk.
She spent Friday night in a local hospital's emergency room after the alleged attack. She claimed that Buniah Al-Saud beat her, hit her head against a wall, and pushed her down a flight of stairs at the Hunter's Creek apartment that they shared for 10 months.
"She started beating me. She punched my head and pushed me down the stairs. She's been beating me for the longest time, and I don't like it," the victim said.
"When we talked to her (Ismiyati) through an Indonesian interpreter and saw the extent of her injuries, we upgraded the charges to a felony,'' said Orange County's Undersheriff Malone Stewart.
Ismiyati was treated and released from a local hospital.
The Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C., said the princess had diplomatic immunity. But the Immigration and Naturalization Service said al-Saud, 41, did not tell them of her travel plans, stripping her of diplomatic immunity.
Stewart said State Department officials want to talk to al-Saud.
"It doesn't matter who she's related to,'' he said. "This lady is not here lawfully.''
Al-Saud was confronted by WKMG Local 6 News reporter Tony Pipitone hours before the arrest and he asked her what happened to Ismiyati. "You can ask her," she replied.
"The princess would yell at me, and say she's 'Al-Saud,' and I was under her feet, that she can do anything to me here. She said, 'I can kill you and nothing would happen to me,'" Memet said.
A sheriff's deputy said it would take a high-level crime, like murder, to even detain someone invoking diplomatic immunity. But for an investigation of a misdemeanor battery case, the individual would not be prosecuted.
This isn't the first time a Saudi Arabian princess was caught in a diplomatic bind in Orange County.
In 1995, another Saudi princess, Princess Maha al-Sudairi, wife of the heir to the throne, was accused of beating a servant in Orange County who stole $200,000 from her. Four off-duty Orange County sheriff's deputies were disciplined for mishandling the incident.
