Bound-together bodies of Saudi sisters found in New York river

New York police are investigating the deaths of two Saudi Arabian sisters whose bodies were found duct-taped together on the shore of the Hudson River.

Police said that Rotana Farea, 22, and Tala Farea, 16, were discovered facing each other and bound at the waist and ankles, and were fully clothed, with no obvious signs of trauma, reports the BBC. The cause of their deaths has yet to be determined.

The sisters had moved from Saudi Arabia to the US with their family in 2015 and settled in Fairfax, Virginia, around 225 miles from where their bodies were found.

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According to media reports, the pair had a history of running away. In August, Tala was reported missing but was later found safe and well in New York City with her sister, who had moved there to go to college, reports Arab News. The Saudi-based newspaper says that they had been in contact with their mother until about a week ago.

“But the police in New York said the mother, whom they did not identify, also reported her daughters missing last year. When the local police located the sisters, they asked for protection and were placed in a shelter,” The New York Times reports.

The two young women had recently applied for US asylum, the newspaper says, adding that their mother learned of this after receiving a call from the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington DC.

Investigators say it is too early to determine if any crime occurred or if sisters’ deaths were suicides. “We do not know that a crime took place,” Dermot F. Shea, chief of New York City Police Detectives, told the Times. “We have a terrible tragedy for sure.”

Bodies that wash ashore in Riverside Park, where the sisters were found on 24 October, are often suicide victims who have jumped off of the nearby George Washington Bridge. However, the sisters’ bodies do not appear to have suffered injuries consistent with a jump.

Relatives have denied the suicide allegations, telling the Arab News that the girls, who had two brothers, were “part of a happy and normal family”, and that “the eldest was sent to college in New York City with her family’s blessing”.

US relations with Saudi Arabia have been in the spotlight following the death of dissident Saudi journlist Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post. It has now emerged that Khashoggi was strangled immediately after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul during his visit last month, in what Turkish authorities believe was a pre-planned assassination.