Being Cinderella Ain't All That Great The Islamic World

From the LA Times:

Reporting from Jakarta, Indonesia

The beautiful young socialite slipped the businessman a note scrawled in eyeliner on a crumpled napkin. "Help me," it pleaded.

She was a teenage Indonesian model who had married a Malaysian prince, but Manohara Odelia Pinot says her life with him was no fairy tale. Press accounts of her allegations of abuse and tales of her escape from an unhappy marriage have captivated this country, and further divided two nations that have long been Southeast Asian rivals.

Known across Indonesia by her first name, which means "thief of hearts" in Sanskrit, Manohara is viewed here as a tragic heroine mistreated by an obsessed suitor who became outraged when she would not yield to his demands. In Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, she's dismissed as a lying gold-digger under the control of a vindictive mother.

For nine months, the 18-year-old alleges, she was held captive on the estate of the prince, Tengku Muhammad Fakhry Petra. Grabbing headlines in the Jakarta Globe and other news outlets, she alleged that he cut her with a razor and ordered his doctor to inject her with a tranquilizer and raped her.

"Imagine someone doing something like that to you and you are unable to move, -- you can't do anything about it," she says softly, her eyes tearing. "It was torture, mentally and physically."

Fakhry did not respond to interview requests. But he sued his wife and her mother, Daisy Fajarina, for defamation last summer, and in March, a Malaysian civil court awarded Fakhry a $1.8-million judgment.

Haaziq Pillay, Fakhry's lawyer, says the prince disputed every one of Manohara's claims and questions why she avoided the Malaysian court proceedings.

"From rape to cutting her with a razor to injecting her -- these are only things a monster would do, a psychopath," Pillay says. "My client wants the truth to come out.

"She said she was afraid of the security, but this isn't a cowboy society," he says. "People don't get abducted in the streets here."

Oh, really:

The Department of State remains concerned about the possibility of terrorist attacks against U.S. citizens in Southeast Asia. Extremist groups in the region have demonstrated the capability to carry out attacks in locations where Westerners congregate, and these groups do not distinguish between civilian and official targets. The U.S. Government has designated two such groups, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. JI, which has a known presence in Malaysia, is linked to al-Qaeda and other regional terrorist groups and has cells operating throughout Southeast Asia.

Yeah, no problem at all:

Australia has issued a travel warning over possible terrorist kidnappings from Malaysian coastal resorts, islands and dive sites off the east coast of Sabah.

And, I don't know why a woman would be concerned she wouldn't get a fair trial in Malaysia.