Saudi Gazette report RIYADH — The family of Arwa Baghdadi, who had allegedly escaped to Yemen to join Al-Qaeda there, has appealed to their daughter to come back home, Al-Hayat newspaper reported Monday. A spokesman for the family said: “Not one of us will accept what you have done. “The authorities here are tolerant and forgiving. So please come back.” Her mother, Huda Al-Ahdal, a retired educational supervisor, said her daughter and son Anas told her about their escape to Yemen through a telephone call. Arwa was being tried on terrorism charges but was set free on bail under the guarantee of her father and brother. She was accused of joining Al-Qaeda following the death of her brother Mohammed on Dec. 1, 2010, during confrontations with security forces in Wadi Al-Dawasir region, 600 km south of Riyadh. The mother said when she woke up on April 6 she did not find Arwa and her two children, two-and-a-half-year-old son Osama and four-months old daughter Khadijah, anywhere in the house. She also said her son Anas and his Egyptian wife Afnan, Mohammed's widow and her four-month-old daughter Huda were also missing. According to her uncle Hisham Baghdadi, Arwa had married Yassin Al-Barakati inside the prison where he was being detained on charges of working for Al-Qaeda, and had a boy and a daughter with him. Hisham asked both Arwa and Anas to come back to the Kingdom and said in the past the government has accepted repenting terrorists and provided them with counseling and advice until they became useful members of the society. Arwa would be the third Saudi woman to escape to Yemen to join Al-Qaeda there. She was preceded in 2006 by Wafa Mohammed Al-Yahya who escaped with her children to Yemen before moving onto Iraq via Syria, and Wafa Al-Shihri who joined her husband Saeed Al-Shihri with her two children from another husband.
