TWO daughters of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia claim that they and their sisters have been held against their will for the past 13 years in the royal palace compound in Jeddah.

Princesses Sahar, 42, and Jawaher, 38, have appealed for help in emails and phone calls to The Sunday Times from the closely guarded villa they say they share.

“We slowly watch each other fading into nothingness,” they wrote in an email.

They said their sister Hala, 39, held alone in another villa, had told them “that her mind is slipping away. . . that the life is being sucked out of her . . .”

A fourth sister, Maha, 41, is also held separately in another villa in the palace compound, they said.

The princesses’ explosive claims open a window onto the usually closed world of the secretive royal family in a country where women's right are strictly curtailed.

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