CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (AP) — A princess from Bahrain fell in love with an U.S. Marine, fled the Persian Gulf using fake documents and married him. Now, she is seeking asylum here, saying she faces persecution if she returns to her island nation.
"I did the worst thing possible in my country, to fall in love with a non-Muslim," said Mariam Al Khalifa, 19. "To make it even worse, he's an American."
Al Khalifa's hearing before the Immigration and Naturalization Service is scheduled for Monday. The State Department wants her deported.
According to an account in the Los Angeles Times, Al Khalifa and Lance Cpl. Jason Johnson at first hid their courtship from her parents. When their relationship was revealed, she was confined to the house but spoke with Johnson by telephone.
"We had to see each other behind my family's back," she told the newspaper. "When they found out, they were very angry."
She declined to comment further to The Associated Press except to say she hoped to eventually repair relations with her family.
Al Khalifa carries the title of sheika because her father, Sheik Abdullah Al Khalifa, is a cousin of the head of state, Emir Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.
Bahrain is a small island off the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia that also is the regional base for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet. Johnson, 25, was assigned to a unit providing security for Americans there.
He met Al Khalifa at a mall in the country's capital of Manama and a romance blossomed, the newspaper reported Monday. As his deployment was ending late last year, he didn't want to leave without her.
She dressed in baggy clothes and a New York Yankees cap to hide her long hair, and hopped a ride on a commercial airplane using U.S. military documents that Johnson had forged, the newspaper reported.
In Chicago, INS officials discovered the ruse. Al Khalifa immediately requested political asylum. The INS granted her request for a hearing and in the meantime, the couple married in Las Vegas.
"I think they'd kill her if she ever returned," her husband said. "She embarrassed the royal family. To keep their reputation clean, they would have to take vengeance."
For his part, Johnson was demoted to private first class and given extra duty. The couple currently live on the military base.
The newspaper quoted an unidentified spokesman for the Bahraini Embassy in Washington as saying that Al Khalifa shouldn't worry about returning home because "the family still loves her very much and would love her to go back."
But Al Khalifa says she fears right-wing clergy in Bahrain might encourage others to attack her if she returns.
Some Middle East experts doubted that Al Khalifa faces any real danger in Bahrain, though she may be socially ostracized for dishonoring her family and country.
"If her family forgives her, I don't think there is much the clerics would do," said Richard Dekmejian, a Middle East expert at the University of Southern California.