Ryan was just a toddler when she had to leave her village in Syria in 2011. Because of the civil war it had become too dangerous. Like many Syrian refugees, she first stayed in Turkey for a while, but the family moved on in 2016. They ended up in Joure, Friesland, where she eventually lived with her father, mother and seven brothers and sisters. But Ryan’s future in the Netherlands ended in 2024, when she was just eighteen. Her body was found in a swamp in the Oostvaarderplassen. “Hands and feet tied with duct tape, left like an object,” the public prosecutor said in the Lelystad court on Friday. “Ryan came to the Netherlands for safety, but she was never safe.”
Her now 25-year-old brother Muhanad al N. and 23-year-old brother Mohamed al N. are on trial for murder by association. They are suspected of putting an end to Ryan’s life together with their 53-year-old father Khaled al N. An unconditional sentence of twenty years was demanded against the brothers, who both deny involvement in the murder, in the Lelystad court on Friday. If Khaled were extradited to the Netherlands, he would receive a sentence of 25 years, also unconditional.
The brothers listen impassively and are escorted back to prison by officers, where they have been held for 543 days.
Father’s Confession
Father Khaled is not present in court because he has fled to Syria. He admitted in court on Thursday through his lawyer that he killed his daughter, but that he hid it from the brothers. Next week, lawyers for Muhanad and Mohamed will respond to the Public Prosecution Service’s demand and the verdict is scheduled for January 5.
In court on Friday, the prosecution reconstructed what preceded Ryan’s death.
Ryan was “outgoing, temperamental, open and cheerful,” the prosecutor said. She increasingly “struggled” with the family’s views, which were not in line with “the Western freedoms of the Netherlands.” Since 2022, Ryan has stayed in institutions several times because things were not going well at home, she was abused and sometimes seemed suicidal. She was also once removed from her home due to a risk of “honor-related violence”. She always came back home herself. Her friends were treated harshly by her father and brothers. At eighteen she took her own life into her hands. According to a witness quoted by the prosecutor, she once said to family members: “It’s over. My way of thinking and yours clash. It is very difficult for me to understand you.” She no longer wanted to wear a hijab and a live stream on TikTok was the last straw. The family doesn’t think that is possible.
The father is a “difficult and aggressive man” towards his children, the prosecutor says. Two of Ryan’s sisters make a statement. “He was not a father like other fathers,” says one of his daughters. “We lived in tension because of his temper. We couldn’t say anything in the house when he was there. Then he would turn his anger on us as if we were guilty.” He has “repeatedly threatened several of his children with death,” she says. “But no one could have ever thought that this would one day become reality. We ask the Dutch government to arrest him so that he gets his deserved punishment.”
App groups
Suspect Muhanad wonders in court why the police never did anything with reports about their father. He says that after his father had beaten him, he went to the police station, but that he was not allowed to tell his story. “When I went to a Gaza demonstration, the police showed up on the sidewalk afterwards.”
In the app group Seniors in their twenties, the eldest brothers – Muhanad and Mohamed – discussed with two sisters in the weeks leading up to her death about the burden that Ryan has become. “She has tarnished our honor and decency,” wrote one of the participants, “may God kill her.” Another: “Killing her is halal (clean).” There was extensive speculation about how that should be done. “The plant with large leaves in the living room is poisonous,” writes Mohamed. “We’ll give her half a sheet of this.” The plant is indeed found during a search.
The suspects believe that the messages are not meant seriously, but the officer does not find this credible because there are a large number of messages.
In consultation with their father, the suspected brothers picked up Ryan in Rotterdam on May 27, 2024, where she spent a few days with an acquaintance. They left for the Oostvaardersplassen, the last part they no longer use main roads. Father Khaled leaves Joure. Meanwhile, there was almost constant mutual contact in the family’s app groups. In the chat group ‘Honorable Family’, which is used by father, mother, Muhanad, Mohamed and the two eldest sisters, Ryan was called, among other things, a “slut who deserves death”. That message was sent from the mother’s phone, but the officer emphasizes that it is not certain that the mother wrote that because the phone was in the father’s possession. The brothers and their father can all be linked to the crime scene using telephone and camera data. The brothers also do not deny that they took her there. DNA material from father Khaled has been found under Ryan’s nails, linking him to the murder, and there is none of the brothers. But, the officer says, it is clear that they have made a “significant contribution”. “It was collaboration at its best.”
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