No foul play suspected in deaths of Saudi sisters

New York: New York police said they had no evidence indicating that two sisters whose bodies were found duct-taped together in Manhattan had been killed.

“There is nothing pointing to a crime as of yet,” said a New York Police Department spokesman on Friday, adding that “it is still very much a live investigation” without providing details of any probable cause of death.

The two young women, identified as Rotana Farea, 22, and her sister Tala, 16, were found on the banks of the Hudson River last week with no visible signs of trauma, dressed all in black, with fur-trimmed coat collars, and bound together at the ankles and waist by duct tape.

It has since emerged that the sisters were Saudi nationals, and had run away several times from their family’s home in Virginia where they had not lived since 2017.

They had been placed in a shelter but left Fairfax County in August and set out for New York.

They stayed in several different upscale hotels in the city and maxed out a credit card, according to a NYPD spokesman.

Suicide is among the hypotheses as to the cause of their deaths.

Another rumour raised in the mysterious case alleges that the Saudi embassy threatened the two sisters or their family with repatriation for seeking asylum in the United States, and that they were afraid.

A police official appeared to confirm on Friday that the girls had indeed applied for asylum.