Palma court shelves case against Saudi Prince

PALMA Provincial Court has provisionally shelved the case against Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, accused of raping a model on his yacht in Ibiza.

The Prince’s defence claims that he was not in Ibiza when the events took place in 2008, and hasn’t been there in the past 10 years.

The judge has said that it is impossible to establish what happened in the early hours of August 11 or 12, 2008, on the yacht where the model, named only as Soraya, claims the attack took place.

He pointed out that she now claims that her recollections of the events are clear, but when she was first questioned, she gave a different version of the events and claimed to have been in a state of semi-consciousness.

The 20-year-old model said she was drugged at an Ibiza nightclub and taken to the yacht and raped.

The case was originally closed in July 2010 by an Ibiza judge due to lack of evidence but the decision has since been appealed. Traces of semen were collected when the woman reported the incident to the police.

“Instead of documents, the prince should simply provide a DNA sample if he wants to close this matter,” said Javier Beloqui, one of Soraya’s lawyers, according to a New York Times report.