(New York) American justice on Thursday indicted the father and brother of a woman from New York State, accused of having kidnapped her in Mexico to take her by force to Yemen in order to enter into an arranged marriage. .
Khaled Abughanem (50) and Waleed Abughanem (32), the father and brother of the victim, have been arrested and face life imprisonment for criminal conspiracy to kidnap people in a foreign country.
At the beginning of September 2021, this adult American citizen whose name is not revealed in the complaint, traveled to Mexico to marry her fiancé, whom she had been dating for nine years without having informed her family. said the US Department of Justice.
Once informed, the victim’s family traveled to Mexico and forced her to return – against her will – to the United States, according to court documents.
Once in the city of Buffalo, she was forced out of college, had no internet access, was banned from contacting her fiancé, and was locked up at home.
“The victim was told that if she did not comply and accept an arranged marriage, she would be locked up in her home and cut off from the outside world forever, and that her fiancé […] would be killed,” the Justice Department said.
At the end of September, she takes the plane to go to Egypt and then to Yemen with her family. The victim then tries to flee several times, in vain.
According to court documents, in Cairo, the victim indicated that his father told him: “You are no longer in the West, you are in the Middle East, (here) women like you are killed”.
Once in Yemen, they reached an area under the control of Houthi rebels where her father told her that he would receive 500,000 dollars after an arranged marriage, which ultimately did not take place.
Most of the family members left Yemen in April 2022 and left the victim with his brothers in an apartment in the Yemeni capital.
The indictment does not specify how US authorities learned of the victim’s whereabouts at the end of 2022.
But the document refers to a non-profit organization that advocates for the victim and passed on details of his situation.