Saudi Prince, Alwaleed, Fights Rape Accusation in Spain
Labels: Alwaleed , Fights Rape Accusation in Spain , Saudi Prince
The office of Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, a billionaire investor and nephew of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, released documents to rebut an accusation that the prince raped a Spanish woman on a luxury yacht off the Mediterranean island of Ibiza three years ago. The documents include a full travel agenda, passport visa stamps and witness statements about the prince’s whereabouts, all of which indicate that the prince was not in Ibiza in August 2008, when a 20-year-old model filed a police complaint accusing him of rape. The case was closed in July 2010 by an Ibiza judge for lack of evidence, but that decision was appealed to a Spanish provincial court for the Balearic Islands, which includes Ibiza. The provincial court ordered the Ibiza judge, Carmen Martín Montero, to resume the case and to summon the prince to appear. The accuser, who has been identified only by her middle name, Soraya, said she was drugged at an Ibiza nightclub and then taken to the yacht and raped there. Traces of semen were collected when the woman went to the police. One of the woman’s lawyers, Javier Beloqui, said on Tuesday that “instead of documents, the prince should simply provide a DNA sample if he wants to close this matter,” so that it could be compared with the semen samples. A spokeswoman for Prince Alwaleed’s company said last week that the accusations against him were “completely and utterly false.” She said the prince did not charter a yacht in Ibiza, or take his own yacht there, at the time when the model said she was assaulted. “Neither the prince nor his lawyers have ever been contacted by the court in Spain,” the spokeswoman said on Tuesday in an e-mail. “However, we have widely disseminated this documentation into the public record, and certainly expect that Spanish authorities now have full access to these materials.” Prince Alwaleed is the largest individual stakeholder in Citigroup and, among his other major holdings, is the second-largest investor in the News Corporation. Forbes valued his fortune this year at $19.4 billion, making him the 26th richest man in the world and the richest in the Arab world.
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