Candice Cohen-Ahnine

Candice Cohen-Ahnine (c. 1977 – 16 August 2012) was a French Jewish mother involved in a legal battle with Saudi Prince Sattam bin Khalid bin Nasser Al Saud over custody for her child Aya, who she said was kidnapped from her. In January 2012, a French court ruled that the prince must hand over the child to Cohen-Ahnine, and the prince faced an international arrest warrant. On 16 August 2012, Cohen-Ahnine fell to her death from a Paris window under mysterious circumstances, days after she told her family that she did not feel safe.

Custody battle In 1998, Cohen-Ahnine met Prince Sattam bin Khalid bin Nasser Al Saud, a grandson of Prince Nasser, in London at a nightclub while vacationing in London when she was 18 years old. During his courtship, he pretended that he was Jewish but he wanted to keep it as a family secret.

In November 2001, their daughter, Aya, was born.

The relationship between Cohen-Ahnine and the Prince continued, despite their differences in religion and nationality

In September 2008, Prince Sattam allegedly kidnapped Aya when she and her mother visited Saudi Arabia. Cohen-Ahnine said that she had been accused by the Saudi authorities of being a Muslim who converted to Judaism, a capital crime in Saudi Arabia, and was held in the prince's palace. However, she reportedly escaped when a maid left her door open and fled to the French embassy,

On 16 August, Cohen-Ahnine died after falling to her death from a window in Paris. It is unclear whether the death was an accident or was a murder, but suicide has been ruled out.

Cohen-Ahnine's lawyer said the death appeared to be "some sort of accident" and did not know whether it was malicious, but did say that "what I can tell you is that it wasn't a suicide". Jean-Claude Elfassi, a co-author of Cohen-Ahnine's book, said, "I can only show my disgust at the slowness of the investigating judge in charge of her case, who after three years of investigating never delivered an arrest warrant for Prince Sattam al-Saud."

On 14 June 2013 it was announced that the second husband of Candice Cohen-Ahnine Alain Cucumel was "mis en examen" (in the French criminal procedure the point at which a person formally becomes a suspect at law) for "aggravated assault and battery causing unintentional death".