“Golden Cage”: The tragic story of the princess who died of an overdose

The former Qatari princess, found dead of a suspected drug overdose in Malaga, Spain, talked about it “nightmare” as a member of the royal family in an interview given a few weeks before his death.

Princess Kasia Al Thani, The third wife, 46, of billionaire Abdelaziz bin Khalifa Al Thani, 73, described how the transition from growing up in a normal home in the United States to joining the royal family was challenging, adding “more money, more problems” .

She married the prince after he courted her as a 19-year-old student in Paris. and, despite the 28-year age difference, they had three daughters.

But their romance ended and the couple separated in 2007 before divorcing, and the former princess, now known as Kasia Gallanio, she had to sell her jewelry to survive.

The woman, who was related to Hollywood stars and had 500,000 Instagram followers, had also waged a toxic custody battle for her daughters, in which a court heard one of them accused her father of touching her. “inappropriate” something that denies.

On Sunday, she was found dead in her Marbella apartment complex after one of her daughters alerted Spanish police in Paris that she had not been able to contact her mother for days, El Pais reported.

The Spanish newspaper indicates that the doorman allowed several agents to enter the Kasia apartment complex in Marbella at around 8am on Sunday.

Weeks earlier, Kasia, of Polish descent, had talked about her turbulent relationship with the former Minister of Oil and Finance. In an interview released on April 17, she said her current life was like living in a “Golden cage”, and that she wanted to get rid of her ex-husband, which she thinks He refused to pay child support.

She told Women’s World: “Money is a curse because it isolates you from many people. It’s a different world. I grew up in a normal home, so it was a completely different world. Growing up in the United States and joining the royal family as an American. It was something completely new. “

The former princess has revealed that she had to sell her jewelry due to her long and bitter divorce, despite living in a luxury mansion in Marbella.

“Abdelaziz likes to control me through children, who I think are not very polite and only hurts them.”

A breakup on bad terms

The separation of Gallanio, with dual American and Polish nationality, from Sheikh Al-Thani sparked a tough legal battle for the custody of their three underage daughters in 2012, in a case that dragged on without solution. On May 19, the Paris court rejected the woman’s requests, that she had spent several months in hospital in November and that, according to the French newspaper, she was subject to nervous breakdowns and detoxification treatments. This prompted a judge to adjourn the case. until a psychological evaluation of the woman is obtained to better understand the family situation.

According to Le Parisien, one of the couple’s daughters reported in mid-April that she was the victim of sexual harassment by her father when she was between the ages of 9 and 15, allegations that the Qatari Sheikh’s entourage denies, but which led to the Paris prosecutor’s office to open an investigation into aggravated sexual violence, headed by the fire brigade for the protection of minors. “My client was devastated by this decision. I think, above all, he died of pain “, says her lawyer, Sabrina Boesch, to the Parisian newspaper, which is in Spain with the woman’s two eldest daughters, 17, who had to identify her mother on Monday. .

The 73-year-old father does not speak to them and only pays for the costs of “modest hotels or short-term accommodation”, while the youngest of the sisters, 15, lives in her home, a 5,000 m2 building on Montaigne Avenue in Paris. , “Isolated from the world and in a situation of school dropout”according to the newspaper.