Couple who locked up daughter charged
Israeli authorities have indicted an Arab-Israeli couple on charges they imprisoned the man's daughter for several years in their West Bank home and encouraged her to kill herself.
According to the indictment, filed yesterday, the girl was held in a bathroom or in another room of the house, sleeping uncovered on a blanket. She was let out only at night to do housework.
The indictment says the man beat his daughter, sometimes after his wife -- the girl's stepmother -- egged him on. It doesn't identify the people involved.
But 20-year-old Baraa Melhem (pictured in this Getty Images photograph) claimed last month after Palestinian security forces in the West Bank rescued her that she had been imprisoned for 10 years by her father, Hassan Melhem.
- Karla Dewitte
Irish Independent
