Misha'al bint Fahd al Saud
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| Misha'al bint Fahd al Saud |
|---|
| House of Saud |
| Misha'al bint Fahd bin Mohammed bin Abdul Aziz al Saud |
Misha'al bint Fahd al Saud (1958-1977) (Arabic: الأميرة مشاعل بنت فهد بن محمد آل سعود) was a Saudi Arabian princess who was a victim of an honour killing, being publicly killed by her own family on a trumped-up charge of adultery in 1977, at the age of 19. She was a granddaughter of Prince Muhammad bin Abdul Aziz, who was an older brother of the then King of Saudi Arabia, Khalid bin Abdul Aziz.
She was legally married according to the Sharia, but the king refused to recognize her marriage to a commoner[1]. After attempting to fake her own drowning and being caught trying to escape from Saudi Arabia with her husband, she and her husband were executed on the orders of her grandfather, Prince Muhammad bin Abdul Aziz. There is no clear evidence that a trial of the Princess or her lover took place. No charges have ever been brought against her grandfather.
Her death and events that lead up to it were dramatized in the docu-drama Death of a Princess (1980):
- "The difference between the official version, which was the girl was killed because she was found guilty of adultery, and the truth of it, which turns out that she was, in fact, executed by the king's elder brother in an act of tribal vengeance in a parking lot in Jeddah, was, in fact, the heart of the controversy because that was the part that, of course, the royal family could not countenance. And that was the great outrage."
- - David Fanning, Cowriter and Executive Producer of Death of a Princess
