JEDDAH, 6 December 2007 — Yemeni police handed over a 14-year-old Saudi schoolgirl, who went missing a month ago in Jeddah and reappeared in Yemen, to the Saudi Embassy in Sanaa, Al-Madinah newspaper reported.
The girl, called Noha, telephoned her father a few days ago saying she had eloped with a young Yemeni man and asked for forgiveness for the pain she had caused her relatives.
Noha was found to be missing from school when her father went to pick her up at home time. Her father previously told Al-Madinah that he had his daughter’s name announced over the school’s loudspeakers and waited at the school for several hours before reporting her missing to police.
Noha told her father that the couple stayed in Jeddah for a few days after which the man drove her to Yemen without telling her that they were leaving Saudi Arabia. She told her father that on reaching Yemen, she was forced to marry the man.
The father notified Saudi police, who in turn informed the Saudi Embassy in Sanaa. Yemen’s Interior Ministry was notified and police were ordered to arrest the man.
According to Yemeni police, officers surrounded the flat where the couple were living and waited outside hoping to arrest the man. However, the man, who was out at the time, noticed the police and managed to evade capture. Officers entered the flat and rescued the girl.
In a telephone call to her father, Noha said she had been threatened and forced to undergo the marriage. She said she was well and had not been hurt in any way, and that the Yemeni man felt her father would stop looking for her if he found out she had got married.
