Maid found Saudi Prince’s secret torture room — 24 hours later she paid the price…
A 26-year-old housekeeper from Indonesia died of poisoning 24 hours after accidentally finding the key to the locked basement of a Saudi [music] princess’ palace. Her death was officially ruled as acute heart failure. Siti arrived in Riyadh in early May 2023. An agency [music] in Jakarta promised her a dream job, $800 a month, a private room, meals, and 2 days off per week, which she could save up and use to travel home once a year.
For a girl from a small village in Central Java, where her parents had grown rice all their lives, this amount seemed like a fortune. Siti was the eldest of three children, and the responsibility for the whole family rested on her shoulders. Her father suffered from back pain and could no longer work in the fields, and her mother earned extra money by sewing, but it was barely enough to put food on the table.
Her younger sister, the smartest in her class, dreamed of going to college and becoming a teacher. The $600 that Siti planned to send home each month would not only feed her family, but also allow them to build a new brick house to replace their old wooden one, which was in danger of collapsing during the rainy season.
The palace where she was taken was located in a prestigious area of Riyadh, hidden behind a high white fence. It did not resemble traditional Arab buildings, but rather a modern European villa of gigantic proportions. Three floors, 40 rooms, a swimming pool, a tennis court, and a garden that seemed to Siti larger than her entire village.
Inside, there was sterile cleanliness, white marble, panoramic windows, minimalist furniture. She was greeted by the head butler, a 60-year-old man named Ibrahim, an Egyptian who had worked for the royal family for most of his life. He spoke broken English, but his tone brooked no argument. He led Siti to the servants’ wing, showed her a small but clean room, and explained the rules.
Up at 5:00 in the morning, work until 9:00 in the evening with a break for lunch. No unnecessary conversation with the owners, no strangers in the house, no photographs. Siti was one of 15 members of the service staff, cooks, gardeners, drivers, security guards, and housekeepers, mostly Filipinos, Indonesians, and Ethiopians.
She was assigned to the east wing, where the owners’ bedrooms, guest rooms, and private offices were located. The work was monotonous, but not too hard, making beds, dusting countless surfaces, cleaning bathrooms that sparkled with gold and marble. Prince Faisal, the king’s 38-year-old nephew, was the master of the palace.
He lived there with his wife and two small children. For the first few months, Siti only saw him briefly. He was polite, sometimes nodding to her in greeting, but never speaking. His wife, the princess, spent most of her time in the women’s quarters of the palace or out on business, leaving the nannies to raise the children.
For the first 3 months, life in the palace seemed predictable and almost peaceful to Siti. She got used to the routine and made friends with the other maids, especially Rosa, a Filipina who had been working there for 2 years. Every week, Siti called home via video chat. She showed her parents her room, told them how well she was fed, how polite her employers were.
She never showed them the palace itself, afraid of breaking the rules and not wanting to cause envy or unnecessary questions. She listened proudly as her father talked about the construction of their new house. The foundation had already been laid, and bricks had been purchased. Her younger sister had passed her exams and enrolled in a teacher training college in a neighboring town.
The money Siti sent was working. Her sacrifice had meaning. The first oddity appeared at the end of August. During the briefing for the new group of servants, Ibrahim, the head butler, took them to the service corridor on the first floor. At the very end of the corridor was a heavy steel [music] door with no handle, only a keyhole.
Ibrahim stopped in front [music] of it and looked at everyone sternly. “This door leads to the basement,” he said slowly, choosing his English words carefully. “It is always locked. You are forbidden to even approach this door. Any attempt to open it or ask questions about it will result in immediate dismissal [music] and deportation.
This is a personal order from His Highness. Do you all understand?” Everyone nodded silently. No one had any questions. In a world where your fate and the well-being of your family depended on a single word from your master, orders were not discussed. Siti tried to forget about this door, but soon noticed another oddity.
Sometimes, usually late in the evening, Prince Faisal would seclude himself. He did not leave the palace. >> [music] >> His cars remained in the garage. He simply disappeared for 3 or 4 hours. The other servants whispered that he was working in his office or relaxing in his private cinema.
But Siti, cleaning the east wing, knew that he was not in his office, bedroom, or any other room. Once, staying late to polish the parquet floor in the long corridor, she saw the prince come [music] out of his bedroom, dressed in simple dark clothes, and head not for the main exit, but for the service corridor. He walked silently, like a shadow, and disappeared around the corner leading to that very steel door.
3 and 1/2 hours later, he returned. Siti was finishing cleaning the hall at that moment. The prince walked past her without noticing her. His face was pale, his eyes [music] feverishly shining. He wore thin black leather gloves on his hands. He did not go to his bedroom. Instead, he approached the huge fireplace in the main hall, where a fire was almost never lit.
He took off his gloves, threw them into the fireplace, then took out a lighter and set them [music] alight. He stood for several minutes watching the leather shrink and turn to ash. Only then did he turn and silently walk away to his chambers. Siti froze with the mop in her hands, her heart pounding.
She saw it twice more over the next month. The same routine, going down to the basement, returning a few hours later, burning gloves. No one seemed to pay any attention to it. It was just another quirk of a rich and influential man >> [music] >> that had nothing to do with her. She continued to work, send money home, and count the days until her vacation, trying to convince herself that she was just imagining it all.
But a quiet voice inside her told her that something dark and wrong was hidden behind the white walls of this palace. One night in early October, Siti woke up to a strange sound. It was barely audible, as if coming from far away. She sat up in bed, listening. The sound was like a muffled moan or cry. It was coming from somewhere above, from the ventilation shaft, the grate of which was directly above her bed.
Siti froze, trying to figure out if it was a dream, but the sound repeated itself, this time more clearly. It was a woman’s voice [music] saying something in Arabic. Siti didn’t know the language, but the intonation was full of despair and pain. The voice begged for something, then turned into a muffled cry that ended [music] abruptly.
Silence fell. Siti sat in the dark, her body covered in cold sweat. She didn’t move, afraid to make a sound. 10 minutes later, she heard quiet footsteps in the hallway, moving away toward the master’s wing. She didn’t sleep until morning. As soon as dawn broke, she slipped out of her room and knocked on the door next door, where Rosa lived.
The Filipina opened the door, sleepy and grumpy. Siti stammered as she told her what she had heard during the night. Rosa listened to her, her face growing more and more serious. She pulled Siti into her room and closed [music] the door. “Forget about it,” she whispered, looking Siti straight in the eye. You didn’t hear anything.
Understand? Nothing.” Siti didn’t understand. “But it was a scream. Someone was asking for help,” she insisted. Rosa’s face contorted with fear. “Listen to me,” she said harshly. “The girl who worked here before you was also Indonesian. Her name was Ani. She also started asking questions. She said she heard strange noises.
One day, she disappeared. Ibrahim told us she was fired for stealing and deported, but I don’t believe it. None of us believe it. We didn’t see her leave. Her things were left in the room. They were just thrown away. If you want to survive here and help your family, you will keep quiet. You saw nothing and heard nothing.
” These words silenced Siti. Fear for her own life and fear for her family’s future outweighed her curiosity and compassion. She nodded to Rosa, promised to keep quiet, [music] and went back to work. But now, every rustle in the palace, every glance from the prince, every shadow in the corridor caused her to panic.
She tried to work faster, avoid unnecessary contact, and be invisible. The nighttime scream would not leave her mind. She imagined the face of that girl, Annie, and wondered what had become of her. She continued to send money home, but now her joy at her family’s success was mixed with a bitter feeling of guilt and fear.
A week passed. Siti almost [music] convinced herself that she had dreamed the scream, that Rosa’s words were just an exaggeration. She was gathering the prince’s clothes [music] to send to the laundry. She mechanically checked the jacket pockets as Ibrahim had taught them. In one of the inside pockets, her fingers found something hard and cold.
She pulled it out. It was a key, an ordinary steel key, but not one for the palace rooms. It was larger, more massive, with a non-standard beard. Siti immediately understood which door this key was for. Her heart was beating so hard that it seemed to be heard throughout the palace. She looked around. There was no one in the corridor.
Quickly slipping the key into her uniform pocket, she took the clothes to the laundry room. All day long, she felt the key burning her thigh through the fabric. She had a plan, a risky, crazy [music] plan that could cost her everything, but she could no longer live in ignorance. [music] She had to find out what was behind that door.
The next day, she had a few hours off to buy some things for herself. Instead of going to the market, she took a taxi to the old part of town where there were many small workshops. [music] She found a locksmith, an elderly Pakistani man sitting in a [music] tiny shop cluttered with locks and keys. With trembling hands, she handed him the key.
“I need a copy, very urgently,” she said. The man took the key, turned it in his hands, and grunted. “It’s a complicated lock. $50,” he said. It was almost all of her monthly savings, money she had been putting aside for a gift for her mother. But Siti agreed without hesitation. Half an hour later, she had two keys in her hands.
She discreetly returned the original to the pocket of the same jacket when it came back from the cleaners. She kept the copy. She waited for the right moment for almost 2 weeks. The prince led an active social life, often leaving for night meetings and events. Siti kept track of his schedule by eavesdropping on the staff’s conversations.
Finally, one night, she learned that the prince had left for an official reception at the embassy and would not return until morning. The palace fell silent after midnight. The staff dispersed to their rooms. Siti waited until 3:00 in the morning when everyone was in the deepest sleep. She put on dark clothes, slipped her phone and key into her pocket, and slipped out of her room.
She walked through the sleeping palace like a ghost. Every creak of the parquet floor echoed in her ears like a gunshot. She reached the service corridor and the steel door. Her heart was pounding in her throat. Her hands were shaking so much that she had trouble inserting the key into the keyhole. It turned with a quiet click.
Siti held her breath and opened the door slightly. Behind it was a narrow concrete staircase leading down into the darkness. She turned on the flashlight on her phone, and the beam revealed bare walls covered with mold. Covering her mouth with her hand to keep from screaming, she began to descend. At the bottom was a short corridor that ended in another door, this time metal, like a bank vault.
It was unlocked. Siti pushed it, and the door opened silently inward. The smell hit her nose immediately, a mixture of old blood, disinfectants, and human fear. The room was small, about 4 by 6 m. The walls were covered with dark gray soundproofing material. Chains with handcuffs at the ends hung from the ceiling.
Dark brown stains were visible on the concrete floor, which she immediately recognized as dried blood. In one corner stood a large metal cage, inside which lay a dirty mattress and a plastic bucket. But the most frightening thing was in the other corner. On a small metal shelf lay a neat stack of passports. Siti moved closer, her legs feeling like cotton wool.
She took the top passport, Indonesia. She opened it. A photo of a young, smiling girl, name Ani Suryani, the very girl Rosa had talked about. Siti leafed through the passports one by one, her hands shaking more and more. Three Filipinos, two Ethiopians, one Kenyan, one Nepalese, seven passports in total, not counting Ani’s. All young women, all domestic workers, judging by their visas.
The last page of each passport had a stamp showing entry into Saudi Arabia. The dates ranged from 2018 to 2023. None had an exit stamp. Next to the passports [music] [music]
lay a small leather-bound agencies, human rights organizations, our government. Write that this was sent by me, Siti, who works at Prince Faisal’s palace in Riyadh. [music] Write that I am dead. Promise me you’ll do it.” A minute later, Farah replied, “Siti, what’s wrong? You’re scaring me.” Siti wrote, “Just promise.
” Farah replied, “I promise.” Siti deleted the conversation from her phone and went to bed, but she couldn’t sleep. In the morning, she acted as usual. She got up at 5:00 a.m., put on her uniform, and went to clean the east wing. She avoided looking other servants in the eye, afraid that her fear was written on her face.
As she was cleaning the prince’s office, he walked in. This was unusual. He was usually in the gym at this time. He stopped in the doorway, looking at her. Siti froze with the rag in her hand, her heart sinking. “Good morning, Siti,” he said in his usual polite tone. But there was something new in his eyes, something cold and appraising.
“Good morning, Your Highness,” she murmured, not looking up. He stood there for a few more seconds, then asked, “Did you sleep well tonight? No nightmares?” Her blood ran cold. It couldn’t be a coincidence. He knew. Maybe he had found traces of her being downstairs. Maybe there was a camera not only outside, but also inside.
Or maybe one of the servants had seen her and reported it. Siti felt the ground slipping away from under her feet. “No, Your Highness. I slept well, thank you,” she replied, trying to keep her voice from trembling. The prince nodded, [music] his lips curving into a semblance of a smile. “That’s good.
” He said, and left the office. Siti leaned against the wall, trying to catch her breath. 48 hours. She had to hold out for 48 hours. She worked all day as if in a fog. Every minute dragged on forever. She waited for them to come for her at any moment, grab her, >> [music] >> drag her downstairs to that very room. But nothing happened.
Life in the palace went on as usual. In the evening, when she was finishing work, Ibrahim found her. “The prince is calling you.” He said in his usual impassive tone. Siti followed him, her legs feeling like lead. The prince was sitting in his chair in the living room, reading a book. He looked up when she entered.
“Siti.” He said. “Could you bring me some tea? English breakfast with milk and no sugar.” This was also unusual. The prince’s tea was always served by another maid, an Ethiopian woman named Leila, who had been trained in the proper ceremony. Siti nodded and went to the kitchen. Her hands were shaking as she brewed the tea.
She placed the cup on a tray and [music] carried it to the prince. He took the cup, took a sip, thanked her, and sent her away. Siti returned to the kitchen feeling completely devastated. Leila, who was having dinner at the time, looked at her in surprise. “He asked you to bring him tea? That’s strange.” She said.
Siti shrugged. There was a teapot with leftover tea on the table. Siti was exhausted [music] and thirsty. She poured herself a cup from the same pot, drank it in one gulp, and went to her room. She lay down on the bed without undressing and fell into a restless sleep. She woke up an hour later with a sharp, piercing pain in her stomach.
The pain was so severe that she doubled over, gasping for breath. She began to vomit. Her body shook with convulsions, and she fell from the bed onto the floor. She tried to call for help, but only a wheeze came out of her throat. Rosa, hearing the noise in her room, ran in and screamed in horror when she saw Siti thrashing on the floor with foam at her mouth.
Rosa called the other servants, and they tried to help and called an ambulance. But a few minutes later, Ibrahim entered the room. He was calm, as always. “Cancel the call.” He ordered. “It’s just food poisoning. [music] His Highness’s personal physician is already on his way.” The servants looked at him in confusion, but no one dared to disobey.
They carried Siti back to her bed. Her convulsions were weakening, her breathing becoming [music] intermittent. She stared at the ceiling, her eyes frozen in the horror of realization. Tea. It was the tea. He had poisoned her. She thought of her family, her new home, her sister in college. 48 hours. Please, Farah.
Don’t forget. That was her last thought. The prince’s personal physician arrived 40 minutes later. By that time, Siti was already dead. The doctor conducted a quick examination. He asked if she had any health complaints. Ibrahim said she sometimes complained of heart palpitations. The doctor nodded and filled [music] out the death certificate.
The official cause of death was acute heart failure caused by an undiagnosed congenital heart defect. Siti’s body was taken away that same evening. The Indonesian embassy was notified of the death of their citizen from natural causes. Siti’s family in the village was told that their daughter had died in her sleep from a heart attack.
Meanwhile, in Jakarta, Farah waited. 24 hours passed. 36, 40. Not a single message from Siti. Farah wrote to her again and again, but the messages remained unread. When 50 hours had passed since Siti’s last message, Farah realized that the [music] worst had happened. With trembling hands, she entered the password, Siti’s mother’s name.
The archive opened. Photos appeared on her laptop screen. A torture chamber, chains, blood, passports [music] of dead women, the prince’s diary. Farah screamed, covering her mouth with her hands. She cried for several minutes, then pulled herself together. She had promised. She created an anonymous Twitter account and began posting the photos, one after another.
She added hashtags to each one. Justice for [music] Siti. Saudi prince. Torture chamber. Tagging the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, human rights organizations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, and the official accounts of the Indonesian government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The first post appeared late [music] in the evening, Jakarta time. At first, no one paid any attention to it. But an hour later, an Indonesian journalist noticed it. He retweeted it. Then another. 3 hours later, the hashtag #JusticeForSiti [music] was trending on Indonesian Twitter. By morning, the whole world was discussing it. The post went viral.
8 million views in 12 hours, tens of thousands of retweets. The world’s media picked up the story. Photos of the torture chamber and the passports of the murdered women were on the front pages of all news sites. Faced with a wave of public anger, the Indonesian government issued an official statement demanding that Saudi Arabia conduct an immediate and [music] transparent investigation into Siti’s death and verify the information published online.
The governments of the Philippines, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Nepal joined the demand when they learned that their citizens might be among the victims. Saudi Arabia found itself at the center of an international scandal. Attempts to block posts on social media failed as the information spread too quickly. Under enormous international pressure, the king [music] was forced to order an official investigation.
A team of investigators arrived at Prince Faisal’s palace. The prince denied everything, calling it a conspiracy by enemies of the kingdom. But when the investigators presented him with a search warrant for the basement, he turned pale. The torture chamber was found exactly where Siti had described it. Everything was in place.
Chains, a cage, dried blood. However, the shelves with passports and diaries were empty. The prince had managed to get rid of the main evidence, but he didn’t take one thing into account. The investigators had brought sniffer dogs with them. In the palace garden, under recently planted rose bushes, the dogs found the remains of four women.
DNA testing later confirmed their identities. They were the girls whose passports [music] Siti had photographed. The arrest of Prince Faisal was an unprecedented event in the modern history of Saudi Arabia. A member of the royal family, the nephew of the ruling monarch, was taken into custody and placed in a detention center.
It was a shock to the entire country, where the royal family had traditionally been above the law. The search of the palace and the discovery of the remains turned an international scandal into a full-blown political crisis. The king was faced with a choice. Protect the family’s honor or sacrifice his nephew to preserve the country’s reputation on the world stage.
[music] Under pressure from world leaders and the threat of economic sanctions, he chose the latter. The trial was completely closed. No journalists, no public. The details of the investigation and court hearings were kept strictly confidential. The official Saudi media covered the event very sparingly, reporting only that an investigation is underway into offenses committed by a member of the royal family.
The prince was defended by a team of the country’s best lawyers, who tried to build a defense based on the fact that the prince suffers from a severe mental disorder and was not responsible for his actions. However, the evidence gathered by the investigation was too compelling. Testimony from palace staff, Rosa, and other servants about the prince’s strange behavior and the disappearance of previous housekeepers.
Financial reports showing that the prince had ordered special equipment found in the torture chamber through front companies. Cell phone operator data that tracked his movements inside the palace. The prosecution insisted on the maximum punishment, but the death penalty for a member of the royal family was unthinkable.
The trial lasted 8 months. The outside world received information only through leaks and anonymous sources. Finally, in mid-2024, the Saudi Arabian state news agency issued a brief official statement. It said that Prince Faisal had been found guilty of a series of murders and sentenced by a Sharia court to 30 years in prison.
The court also ordered him to pay monetary compensation to the families of all identified victims. It was the harshest sentence possible under the circumstances. The prince was transferred to a special prison for high-ranking officials, where conditions were far from normal, but he lost his freedom. The Siti family in an Indonesian village received $2 million in compensation.
The money changed their lives, but it did not bring their daughter back. The father stopped working, and the mother was able to receive quality medical treatment. The younger sister graduated from college, became a teacher, and now works at a local school that was renovated with money donated by the family. They built a new house, but Siti’s room remained empty, just as it was before she left for Saudi Arabia.
They never gave interviews, turning down all offers from TV channels and newspapers. The only thing Siti’s father said to a local reporter was, “She wanted us to live better, but not at this price. No amount of money can replace my daughter.” The scandal had far-reaching con- sequences.
Indonesia, the Philippines, and several other countries in Asia and Africa imposed a temporary ban on sending their citizens to work as domestic servants in Saudi Arabia and some other Gulf countries. Negotiations were initiated to revise bilateral agreements, which included new, stricter requirements for the protection of workers’ rights, including mandatory registration with the embassy, regular inspections of working conditions, and the creation of emergency communication channels.
Recruitment agencies came under strict control, and many of them had their licenses revoked for sending workers without proper guarantees. The Siti case [music] became a catalyst for the movement for migrant workers’ rights in the Middle East. Activists and human rights organizations used her story as an example of the systemic problems faced by millions of foreign workers.
Support groups appeared on social media, where domestic workers anonymously shared their stories of abuse and exploitation, helping each other and drawing attention to the problem. Siti’s friend, Farah, who posted the photos, received thousands of threats from Saudi nationalists, but also tremendous support from around the world.
The Indonesian government provided her with protection. She became an activist for the rights of migrant workers and founded the Siti Foundation, which provides legal and financial assistance to women who have suffered violence at the hands of employers abroad. Prince Faisal’s palace was [music] confiscated by the state and demolished.
A public park was built in its place. The story of the abusive prince and the brave housekeeper who sacrificed her life for justice [music] became a dark urban legend in Riyadh, whispered as a reminder that even behind the highest fences [music] and the widest walls, unimaginable evil can lurk.
