A father sent his daughter photos of two Saudi women who were found mysteriously dead in their Sydney home after she refused to return from Australia to get married to her cousin in Saudi Arabia.
The father asked his daughter in a text message if the photos of the dead girls scared her and threatened her, "I swear to God I will kill you, I will bury you and no one will know."
The bodies of Asra Abdullah Alsehli, 24, and Amaal Abdullah Alsehli, 23, were found in their flat in Canterbury, south-west of the city, in June 2022. The sisters had fled Saudi Arabia in 2015 with only $5,000. Their remains were discovered after a two-month search by police.
Both women had active claims with Home Affairs seeking asylum at the time of their deaths and it was suggested they were living in fear, having stayed with family in Saudi Arabia.
Despite the shock waves sent by the death of both women, this Saudi father, who was trying to force his daughter to leave Australia and return to the Arab country to marry her cousin, decided to threaten his daughter with the same fate after she left the strict Islamic kingdom to study in Australia.
The unnamed woman, who was later joined by her mother and three younger sisters in Australia, defied her father's demands to return to her homeland to marry a cousin.
The father sent his eldest daughter a text message in Arabic with photographs of the dead women.
The message reads: "You thought you wouldn't get it! Is the image scary?
"It will come true, I swear to God I will kill you, I will bury you and no one will know, I will come soon and see you.
"This is your destiny and it will be at my own hands."
The message was revealed when the Administrative Appeals Tribunal overturned a Home Office decision to deny the woman a protection visa.
In a separate ruling, the court also granted the same visa to the woman's three sisters and their mother.
The court had heard the older sister was raped shortly before leaving Saudi Arabia and believed she would be killed because she would not be a virgin when she married.
Born into a privileged family in Jeddah, her parents had separated while she was at school, but her father kept the key to the family home and came and went as he pleased.
The woman first came to Australia on a student visa in July 2012, when she was accompanied by her father for about four months, and applied for a protection visa in 2015.
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