Posted on 06/19/2003 11:45:45 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
On the eve of her 24th birthday, Sarah Saga, the courageous, young woman who has sought sanctuary inside the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia for the past five days, was brought face-to-face with members of the Saudi government inside her living quarters. She was not given the choice of refusing these uninvited guests, but told by U.S. consular officers that she must comply with Saudi demands for a meeting.
As Sarah and her two young children huddled in a corner of the room, three Saudi men from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs approached her. She had grown up in a household with an abusive Saudi father who had beaten her on a regular basis, threatened her with a knife, and locked her up in a room for two years as revealed to me in an audiotaped interview a few weeks ago. Now, her worst nightmare was coming true – Saudi men again intimating her and scaring her right inside the U.S. Consulate and in her own bedroom.
One of them said, "Let us tell you what your problem is – but your option is only one." The nervous, frightened woman signed the document placed before her and then the men left. The arrangements had been made. Sarah was to be placed on a commercial airliner at 2 a.m. this morning and her children were to be given to relatives. The Saudis wanted to end this "hostage situation" and get back to their PR campaign in the U.S.
But Sarah has decided that she won't go. "I will never leave my children here to suffer the same horrible life that I had to endure," she tells a Fox News audience. She has locked herself inside her room and keeps her little ones close by.
A couple of days ago, Sarah told her mom that she had a piece of chocolate cake at the consulate cafeteria. "I told Sarah we'll have a big chocolate cake for her birthday when she comes home. That was her favorite."
Birthdays aren't celebrated in Saudi Arabia. They consider it a Western holiday. When I met my daughters in a hotel room in Riyadh eight years ago, Aisha didn't even know her correct age. I brought Alia a "Sweet Sixteen" birthday card as a present, but she was perplexed by it all.
This will be the first birthday in eighteen years that Sarah Saga will celebrate. Although she may be alone in a room in the U.S. Consulate with danger all around her, she can have her chocolate cake with her kids and we can each light one candle for Sarah and pray for her safe return.
Fox News has posted addresses of U.S. officials that can be contacted to express support for Saga in her quest for freedom for both herself and her children.
Sarah Saga, 23, was kidnapped by her father as a child in 1985 and taken to the kingdom. She has been prohibited from leaving there ever since. As has happened with other Americans, Saga was married off to a Saudi and bore her own children. Now the woman, who claims to have been abused by her father, stepmother and husband, has sought refuge in the U.S. Consulate. She is pleading with U.S. officials to help her and her children, age 3 and 5, travel to America. According to her mother, Debra Dornier, however, Saga has been told if she leaves, her Saudi-born children must stay in the kingdom.
leni
She is an American and is free to leave. The kids are not American citizens.
The above being subject to their presence in the US, of course....
I hope you are not a lawyer.
No US official is quoted. They only say some US official said something. And it could be that he was wrong.
Would you want the US to turn over two American kids against their father's wishes to their non-American mother in another country?
As my page indicates, I am an attorney. Mostly maritime law, but immigration as well.
Correct. The official is not quoted by name but the article says this is the something that was supposedly said to AP:
According to the AP report, a U.S. official said today that the children, being of an American mother, were also American. Saudi Arabia, however, does not recognize dual citizenship.
I wasn't trying to play semantics, honest. It's one of my least favorite games. :)
Are they dual citizens? Don't the children have a Saudi father and a half-American mother and weren't they born in Saudi Arabia?
There are exceptions, of course, as to whether or not the children acquire US citizenship at birth. The mother's absence from the US will pertain here. I don't think there's any doubt that the children may opt for US Citizenship at age 18, if they can make it to the States.
The main issues here are that 1) - Saudi doesn't recognize dual citizenship to begin with, and 2) - they don't recognize any rights except Saudi male rights. It'll be almost impossible to get the kids out of the country - they can't just walk up to a airline counter and hop on a plane there.
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