The major absentee is still father Khaled, who fled to Syria via Bremen and Turkey immediately after the murder. From the country he previously fled with his family, he sent emails to De Telegraaf in which he took full responsibility for the death of his daughter. His sons knew nothing, he wrote.
Ryan (18) is not the only victim of honour-related violence in the Netherlands: men also have to fear family wrath
The Public Prosecution Service thinks differently about this. He thinks that the brothers are just as guilty of the horrific death of their sister as father Khaled. It was Mohamed and Muhanad who found out Ryan’s whereabouts in Rotterdam and picked her up because her father wanted to talk to her.
Family mediator
Mohamed portrayed himself in court as the family’s mediator, always looking for solutions to problems. He said he believed that his father mainly wanted to talk to his rebellious daughter who would destroy the family’s honor. So they convinced Ryan to come with them and promised to protect her.
Murder plot on Ryan (18) from Joure ‘discussed in family app group’: teenager begged for help several times
Meanwhile, chats the brothers had with their father along the way indicate something completely different. In those chats, father Khaled repeatedly called his daughter ‘pig’ and ‘bitch’: “If I had a snake as a daughter, that would be more honorable than her.”
He also told the brothers to find a lake and dump their sister in it: “It has to be deep. Weigh her down by the legs. Let the fish eat her and no traces of her can be found.” And also: “I will be with you in half an hour. I have brought tape to tie up the mouth and legs. Then throw her into the sea with weight on her legs.”
Sixty yards of duct tape
The brothers do not answer. Or deleted their answers. The next day, Ryan’s body was found in shallow water along the Knardijk in Lelystad. Her mouth was closed with duct tape, and there were strangulation marks on her neck. Her wrists were tied behind her back and her ankles were also wrapped in duct tape. “A total of sixty meters of tape,” prosecutors said.
Ryan was almost certainly not dead, but possibly unconscious when she was dumped into the water. Water in her lungs indicates she drowned.