The Texan Doctor and the Disappeared Saudi Princesses
October 16, 2024 at 05:52AMThis is a disturbing insight into the lives of four Saudi princesses imprisoned in a palace compound by their father, King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud. Abdullah, despite proclaiming himself a champion of women’s rights, mercilessly dominated his daughters. Heidi Blake discovers some of his means of control (sedation and alcohol) from Dwight Burdick, a private physician to the Saudi royal family, who bravely speaks out after learning of the deaths of two of the princesses—while they still lived in isolation.
Though Burdick knew the risks involved in criticizing the Saudi regime—“note the fate of Jamal Kashoggi,” he wrote me in an e-mail—he insisted that he was unafraid. “I’m old, and I’m going to die one of these days, and I want to die with some satisfaction that I’ve done my best,” he said.
I spoke with four former palace medics who further corroborated significant aspects of Burdick’s account. One former colleague of Burdick’s, a doctor who worked for the royal family for several years, told me that he referred to the King’s four imprisoned daughters as “the Rapunzels.” He confirmed that Hala and Maha were kept on a regimen of heavy sedatives. “I felt sorry for them, but obviously there were political issues here that were way outside my pay grade,” he told me.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/10/15/the-texan-doctor-and-the-disappeared-saudi-princesses/
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