8 January 2019 10:43 am
Saudi teenager Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun has barricaded herself in a hotel room (pictured) at a Thai airport(DM)
A Saudi woman barricaded herself inside a Bangkok hotel room to avoid being returned to her family who she says will kill her after she renounced Islam and tried to flee to Australia.
Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, 18, has been at Bangkok airport since Saturday when she was denied entry by Thai immigration officials, who deny her accusations that she was detained at the behest of the Saudi government.
The teenager was due to have been escorted onto a flight to Kuwait this morning - but she never boarded the plane and has posted a clip on Twitter of her barricading her hotel door with a table, mattresses and a chair.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry denied her allegations that its embassy had confiscated her passport.
But Abdulilah al-Shouaibi, charge d’affaires at Bangkok’s Saudi embassy, acknowledged that the woman’s father contacted them for ‘help’ to bring her back.
This morning, a human rights lawyer filed an injunction at Bangkok’s Criminal Court to prevent Rahaf, who has been sending out desperate pleas for help over social media, from being deported.
Rahaf said she was fleeing her ‘abusive’ family while travelling in Kuwait, and had flown to Thailand in t he hopes of reaching Australia to seek asylum. But she was stopped when she was deplaned in Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi airport by Kuwaiti and Saudi embassy officials, she said, and has since been held in an airport hotel awaiting deportation.