Al Anoud bint Dahham Al Fayez (born 1957) is the daughter of one of the sheikhs of the

Al-Fayez The House of Fayez (Arabic: الفايز or, colloquially: Al-Fayez, Alfayez, Al Fayez, Al Faiz, Al Fayiz) is a noble sheikhly Jordanian family that heads the major Jordanian clan Bani Sakher. The family's influence and prominence in the region w ...

clan from Bani Sakher, Sheikh Daham bin Dardah Al-Bakhit Al-Fayez in

Jordan Jordan ( ar, الأردن; tr. ' ), officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,; tr. ' is a country in Western Asia. It is situated at the crossroads of Asia, Africa, and Europe, within the Levant region, on the East Bank of the Jordan Rive ...

. She was the wife of

King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud ( ar, عبدالله بن عبدالعزيز آل سعود ''ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al ʿAzīz Āl Saʿūd'', Najdi Arabic pronunciation: ; 1 August 1924 – 23 January 2015) was King and Prime Minister of Saudi A ...

between from 1972 to 2003 when they divorced. She is the mother of four daughters: Jawaher, Hala, Maha, and Sahar. Her daughter Princess Hala passed away in 2021.

The case of Al Anoud and her daughters

Al Anoud Al Fayez appealed to US

President Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...

during his visit to Saudi Arabia to intervene to release her four daughters who had been detained by their father for 14 years, contrary to their desire in a palace in Jeddah, while noting that her daughters had not yet obtained an ID or passport and eat one meal per day. Al Anoud Al Fayez, in an interview with ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...

'' stated that her four daughters were being held by force, and cut off from the outside world. The king appointed the daughters' half-brother to monitor them and document any request for them to leave the palace, provided that it is subject to strict restrictions and was for the purpose of purchases only. The ''Sunday Times'' newspaper sent the full details of the allegations of the two sisters and their mother to the Saudi embassy in London without receiving a response from them, and the

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, commonly known as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) or the United Nations Human Rights Office, is a department of the Secretariat of the United Nati ...

also conveyed the letter of the mother Al Anoud to Rashida Mango, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on violence against women, to take the necessary measures. She has lived since her divorce in 2003 in London.

References

20th-century Saudi Arabian women 21st-century Saudi Arabian women 1957 births Living people Spouses of Saudi kings Saudi Arabian women's rights activists Princesses by marriage {{SaudiArabia-bio-stub