A fleeing Qatari young woman: "They want to imprison me or my family will kill me":
British newspapers published on Sunday discussed a number of issues related to the Arab world and the Middle East, including the story of a young Qatari woman fleeing from her family and living in Britain under the fear of kidnapping, and an investigation of what has become of the city of Taiz, which was once the capital of Yemeni culture after years of civil war, and another about Former fighters in the Syrian armed opposition after the defeat and the absence of support.
We start from the Sunday Times with the story of the young Qatari woman, Aisha Al-Qahtani, the daughter of the senior officer in the Qatari army, who belongs to one of the most influential Gulf tribes. "The daughter of a wealthy Qatari family lives in constant fear of kidnapping," the article is written by Shanti Das, whom Aisha first spoke to with the media.
Das says that this young woman lives in Britain with constant fear that she will face a similar fate to the daughter of Dubai's ruler, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
According to Das, "Aisha was oppressed and mistreated by her family, and whenever she was beaten, or reprimanded for reading western novels, or her paintings were destroyed, she only thought of running away."
And that did not seem easy, "there are iron bars on the windows of her bedroom, and her transportation is monitored via the mobile application for locating, and she will marry a hard-line cleric. She was imprisoned in Qatar. Or this is what everyone thought."
However, on the night of last December 21, the 22-year-old woman managed to escape during a family vacation in Kuwait, despite the travel ban on single girls under the age of 25 without a Muharram escort.
But Aisha crept past midnight from the hotel, and took a taxi to the airport, where she took a plane to London via Amsterdam.
Today, Aisha, a graduate of English literature and philosophy, believes that her life is still in danger, she lives in a secret location in the United Kingdom, and is trying to obtain asylum, and her concerns have escalated following a British court's decision to hold Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum responsible for the kidnapping of his two daughters. They tried to escape, and then hid them.
"The same thing could happen to me," the author quoted Aisha as saying. "I brought shame to the family. I took off the niqab, showed my face and spoke. Their reputation was destroyed."
Aisha's fear is justified, according to the author. After 24 hours of her arrival in Britain, the police called her to inform her that a young relative had been arrested at Heathrow Airport, and three weeks later, she had been transferred through the Ministry of the Interior to a safe place of residence in Cardiff.
But two men from her family were able to track her, and they reached a place she had visited and was very close to her place of residence, and one of them later claimed that he had managed to bribe an employee of the Immigration Service, and he knew where she was staying.
Although Aisha uses a specific application to conduct her communications, and she has severed ties with her acquaintances in Qatar, and has taken many measures to protect her and conceal her place of residence and movements, she still feels that her life is in danger, as she asserts to the newspaper.
According to the article, Aisha received calls from Qatari officials, who promised that nothing would happen to her if she went back to her country, but she says, "They want to imprison me, I will inevitably be imprisoned, or my family will kill me."
Aisha says in her first interview since her arrival in Britain that the "Shard" tower in London, owned by Qatar, is a symbol of Qatar's attempt to "present a bright modern image, while still oppressing women", and adds "they present this wonderful image of Qatar, but in fact the women in Doha are a second-class person, and people do not have freedom of speech. "
Aisha hopes that "her story will lead to change, and be an inspiration to other girls," and she added, "I ran to be free, but at the same time there is this fear, it is not complete freedom."