A Saudi woman who claims she sought asylum in Australia has been stopped on a layover in the Philippines and returned to Riyadh.
Dina Ali Lasloom said in self-recorded videos uploaded to social media that Philippine authorities had held her at the Manila airport and confiscated her passport.
"My name is Dina Ali and I'm a Saudi woman who fled Saudi Arabia to Australia to seek asylum," she said.
"Please help me. I'm recording this video to help me and know that I'm real and I'm here."
The woman did not say why she sought refuge abroad and the authenticity of the videos could not immediately be verified.
The Saudi embassy in Manila issued a statement on Wednesday calling the case a family matter and added without elaborating that she had "returned with her relatives to the homeland."
Philippine authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Meagan Khan, a Canadian tourist, told The Australian newspaper after landing in Bali that she had allowed Ali to use her phone to post the videos on Twitter.
Ali began to cry when two men whom she identified as relatives arrived at the Manila airport, Khan said.
Saudi activists said Ali was forced onto a Saudi Arabia Airlines flight from Manila to Riyadh on Tuesday night.
She did not emerge at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh after the flight landed early Wednesday morning but multiple passengers said they had seen a woman being carried onto the plane screaming.
"I heard a lady screaming from upstairs. Then I saw two or three men carrying her. They weren't Filipino. They looked Arab," said one Filipino woman, who declined to give her name.
A rare gathering of about 10 Saudi activists appeared in the arrivals area of the Riyadh airport around midnight on Wednesday, after a hashtag began circulating on Twitter urging people to "receive Dina at the airport."
One of them, a 23-year-old medical student named Alaa Alanazi, appeared to have been detained after approaching airport security about the case.
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