A human rights campaigner died on a weekend she was in the Cotswolds celebrating her 33rd birthday.
Dubai-born Alaa Al-Siddiq, an executive director of human rights group ALQST, was the backseat passenger in a BMW 1 series that failed to stop at the junction with the A361 near Shipton-under-Wychwood shortly after 8.20pm on June 19, 2021.
She had celebrated her birthday the day before the crash that claimed her life.
A passenger in the Land Rover Freelander that T-boned the hatchback said the BMW had been driven out of the unclassified road towards Shipton-under-Wychwood ‘like a bat out of hell’ - giving them no chance to avoid the collision.
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In evidence read out in court, Rachel Alexander, whose husband Robert was driving their 4x4, said she was ‘surprised’ that when the car came to a stop they were ‘still here’.
The door beside which 33-year-old Ms Al-Siddiq – a human rights campaigner who reportedly left the United Arab Emirates after the ‘arbitrary imprisonment’ of her father – was sitting had taken the brunt of the impact, Oxford Coroner’s Court heard.
Passers-by managed to remove her from the car, which was sitting in a field beside the A-road, and began chest compressions.
Firefighters took over CPR when they arrived at the scene, but were unable to save the woman's life, the inquest heard.
A paramedic pronounced her death at 8.43pm.
A post-mortem conducted by Prof Ian Roberts at the John Radcliffe Hospital discovered that she had suffered multiple injuries, including broken bones, grazes and injuries to her brain.
The pathologist said that death would have been ‘rapid’ and that her injuries were ‘un-survivable’.
Police crash investigator PC Murray Maclean told Ms Al-Siddiq’s inquest on Thursday (March 2) that the driver of the BMW, who was not named on Thursday, gave a prepared statement when they were interviewed by police officers in the wake of the crash.
The BMW driver said that they had been driving within the speed limit.
They were following a route on her Google Maps satellite navigation system, which had not indicated that there was a junction at which they would have to give way.
And they believed the signage at the junction was ‘insufficient’.
Giving evidence to the inquest, Thames Valley Police’s traffic management specialist Chris Hulme said he had raised with Oxfordshire County Council concerns about lack of give-way signage, worn road markings and vegetation on the approach to the A361 from the unclassified road.
In the five years leading up to the fatal crash, there had been two similar collisions at the same spot, including one in 2017 ‘involving serious injuries’.
The coroner was told that improvements had been made by the council since the crash that claimed Ms Al-Siddiq’s life.
Assistant coroner Joanna Coleman recorded a conclusion of road traffic collision.
The cause of Ms Al-Siddiq’s death was given as ‘multiple injuries’.
She expressed her condolences to Ms Al-Siddiq’s family, who did not attend the inquest.
In a statement released after their executive director’s death in 2021, ALQST labelled Ms Al-Siddiq an ‘icon of the Emirati human rights movement’.
They said: “Alaa was a friend, a colleague and a sister to all of those around her, and she always did what she could to help others.”
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