Saudi princesses plead for help as they claim they are being held by the king against their will

Two daughters of the King of Saudi Arabia claim they and their sisters have been held prisoner in the royal palace for 13 years.

Princesses Sahar, 42, and Jawaher, 38, said that they are being kept against their will in a guarded villa in the royal compound in Jeddah.

Their claims shed light into the usually secret world of royal family of a country where women are effectively treated as second-class citizens.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that prohibits women from driving. It scored 130th out of 134 countries analysed by the World Economic forum in a 2009 report on gender parity.

But the restrictions allegedly placed on Sahar and Jawaher go well beyond what is allowed under Saudi law.

In emails and phonecalls to a Sunday newspaper, Sahar and Jawaher claimed that their sisters Hala, 39, and Maha, 41, are also being held, incommunicado, in separate villas in the Jeddah compound.

Their mother Alanoud Alfayez, who is divorced from Saudi King Abdullah, has reportedly written to the UN's human rights agency to intervene on their behalf.

She told the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) that her daughters are 'imprisoned, held against their will, cut off from the world', according to a report in the Sunday Times.

SOURCE-DAILYM