JEDDAH: The Bureau of Investigation and Public Prosecution (BIPP) has launched an investigation into the reasons why four women ran away from a shelter in the city.

Investigators from the BIPP’s honor department have already questioned two of the young women, while the Social Affairs Ministry has been following up on the case, said Abdullah Al-Tawi, the ministry’s director of social affairs in Jeddah.

Al-Tawi said one of the young women, who is 19, had allegedly convinced the others to run away with her. She had already run away from the shelter four times.

She had been placed in the shelter after her family refused to take her back after she completed her prison sentence, a local publication reported recently.

According to sources, her brother had at one stage allowed her to stay with him, but she then ran away from his home, was arrested and placed again in the shelter.

Later she had married but had run away from her husband and was again placed in the shelter. The latest incident is the fourth time she has absconded from the homes where she was living.

According to sources, the woman has continually rebelled against officials at the shelter, and encouraged others to also do so. The four had then used an emergency exit to leave the shelter.

Al-Tawi said the social affairs ministry’s department in Makkah has set up a committee to determine the reasons for their behavior. He rejected reports that someone helped the women to run away from the shelter.

He said the shelter provides accommodation for women who have served sentences for criminal offenses but who are rejected by their families. It provides social, health and psychological services, and works to integrate them into the community.

Saleh Sarhan, director of the Human Rights Commission in Jeddah, who is a former director of the shelter, said he had spoken to the woman who had allegedly planned the escape. He had also asked her father to take her back, but he has refused to do so. This has placed the young women in a difficult situation, he said.

Abdullah bin Mare’, legal adviser and chairman of the National Commission for the Care of Inmates, Released Prisoners and their Families (Trahom), said his organization would help the shelter with financial and moral support.

Nisreen Abu Taha, an official at the shelter, said there are many men who have applied to marry women living at the home who have been rejected by their families.