Khaled Al N. from Joure allegedly confessed to killing his 18-year-old daughter Ryan in emails sent to the Telegraaf. The Syrian man said he took his daughter’s life and fled to Istanbul. Sources previously told the newspaper that Ryan’s very religious family couldn’t accept her lifestyle choices.
Ryan’s body was found in the water along the Knardijk in Lelystad on May 28. She was last seen alive in Joure on May 22. She had been killed in a crime, the police said.
According to the Telegraaf, its editors reached out to Khaled Al N. via an email address linked to the man’s courier company in Leeuwarden. The newspaper received a response on Tuesday afternoon. It was a confession written in Arabic, the newspaper wrote after asking an Arabic interpreter to look at the text. The email reads: “I ask you to publish that I am the one who killed” and “I was very angry with her.”
The email confirms that Al N. has fled to Turkey, according to the newspaper. The man said he was in Istanbul.
He did not elaborate on the motive for his daughter’s murder. “The reason for the murder is between me and the judge, I will read that in court. The courts of the Netherlands are fair and do not treat anyone unfairly.”
Earlier this week, the police arrested two men for involvement in Ryan’s death. The suspects are 22 and 24 years old from Joure and Leeuwarden. Several media outlets, including the Telegraaf, reported that they are Ryan’s brothers.
The Public Prosecution Service (OM) seized the emails after the Telegraaf asked it for a response, NOS reports.
A spokesperson for the Midden-Nederland police told the broadcaster that the police can make no comments about the emails or the identity of the arrested suspects. They are in restricted custody, which means that they are only allowed contact with their lawyers, and the authorities can’t provide information about them.
Ryan’s family lived in Idlib, Syria, until 2012. Khaled worked in a shoe factory in Lebanon, and his wife, Sumaia, took care of the children in Syria. They fled to Turkey when the war broke out and arrived as asylum seekers in the Netherlands two years later. They moved to Joure in 2017.