Lawyer in Saudi trans student's suicide note had embassy links,
When a prominent Saudi trans woman posted her suicide note on X, her friends and followers were devastated. The note, viewed by millions,
Lawyer in Saudi trans student's suicide note had embassy links, When a prominent Saudi trans woman posted her suicide note on X, her friends and followers were devastated. The note, viewed by millions, identified this man as Bader Alomair, who has worked at the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington DC, evidence suggests. He is linked to controversial returns from the United States of several other Saudi students - including two later accused of committing murder during their time at university.Mr Alomair has not responded to the allegations raised in our investigation.
Eden Knight was from one of the Middle Eastern kingdom's most respected families. After moving to Virginia in 2019 on a Saudi government scholarship to study at George Mason University, Eden made the decision in early 2022 to transition from presenting as a man to presenting as a woman, by wearing feminine clothes and taking female sex hormones.
Eden found a community on X and Discord where she felt accepted and started to grow a following online. In one post, she shared a picture of her Saudi ID photo next to her new feminine look and the post went viral Being transgender in Saudi Arabia is not tolerated by either society or the government - we have spoken to several transgender Saudis, now living outside the kingdom, who told us about the harassment, and in some cases violence, they had experienced.
Returning to Saudi Arabia could therefore have been difficult for Eden. We understand her student visa expired at around the time of her viral tweet so she decided to seek asylum in the US in order to stay there permanently.Eden said she was messaged by an old friend who put her in contact with an American private investigator Michael Pocalyko. He offered to help with her asylum claim, and mend the relationship with her family - according to another friend, Hayden, who Eden was living with in Georgia at the time.Other friends have shared messages with us from Eden, which say Mr Pocalyko told her she needed to move from Georgia to Washington DC in order to lodge her claim.According to the final message she posted on X, in late October 2022, the private investigator met Eden off the train in the US capital. He was accompanied by a Saudi lawyer named Bader, she wrote.
"I genuinely was optimistic and believed this could work," Eden said in her final post. She said Bader put her up in a nice apartment near Washington DC and took her sightseeOther friends have shared messages with us from Eden, which say Mr Pocalyko told her she needed to move from Georgia to Washington DC in order to lodge her claim.According to the final message she posted on X, in late October 2022, the private investigator met Eden off the train in the US capital. He was accompanied by a Saudi lawyer named Bader, she wrote.
"I genuinely was optimistic and believed this could work," Eden said in her final post. She said Bader put her up in a nice apartment near Washington DC and took her sightseeing.ing.She messaged them to say her parents had taken her passport and the government had instructed her to close her X account. Eden told friends she had evidence her parents had hired people to get her back to Saudi Arabia, though she never shared that evidence.The lawyer that was helping me with asylum was working with my parents behind my back," she told one of them.Over the next few months, Eden's friends say, she lost any hope of escaping Saudi Arabia.
She worked in a junior position at a tech company and in public assumed her original male identity. Eden messaged a friend to say she was trying to continue taking female hormones, but that her parents repeatedly confiscated them. Eden told friends that she suffered constant verbal abuse, and sent the friends a video - which we have seen - that she secretly recorded of a family member shouting that she had been brainwashed by Western ideas.
