Saudi Arabia has arrested an American who publicly accused her Saudi ex-husband of stranding their daughter in the ultra-conservative kingdom, according to a human rights organization.
Carly Morris was taken into custody on Monday and the whereabouts of her eight-year-old daughter, Tala, are unknown, Freedom Initiative, a Washington-based NGO that says it campaigns for the rights of detainees to wrong in the Middle East and North Africa.
“Our embassy in Riyadh is very committed”
“It is unclear whether her daughter was detained with her or handed over to her ex-husband“, she added in a press release. Saudi authorities did not immediately respond to AFP’s requests for confirmation. According to US State Department spokesman Ned Price, Washington is “aware of reports that Ms Morris has been taken into custody“.
“Whenever someone is detained overseas, we seek to immediately visit them and provide consular assistance“, he said Tuesday at a press conference. “Our embassy in Riyadh is very involved in this affair; she is following the situation very closelyadded Ned Price.
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Carly Morris flew to Saudi Arabia with her daughter in the summer of 2019, to visit her child’s father, a Saudi from whom she is divorced. But shortly after the mother and daughter landed in the capital Riyadh, the ex-husband confiscated the passports. He then took steps to transmit Saudi nationality to his daughter, in order to prevent her from leaving again.
“Disorder of public order”
Since then, Carly Morris has been a prisoner of an interminable ordeal linked to gender inequalities, like other foreigners who have had children with Saudis. In September, she received a summons from Saudi prosecutors informing her that she was being investigated for “disturbance of public order“, linked, according to her, to the publication on social networks of messages denouncing her situation.
She was subsequently banned from traveling, according to an electronic notice seen by AFP. “I’m afraid of being arrested at any moment“, she then told AFP. “My biggest fear will be who will take care of Tala“.