Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

Saudi Arabia: Body of missing Taif boy found | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Taif, Asharq Al-Awsat – The Taif police force yesterday announced that it had found the body of the missing child, Ahmed Fahd al-Ghamdi, in an abandoned building in Taif. In news that shook the city, the Taif police force announced that the young child, aged 4, had been found murdered, and that the murderer had been arrested and confessed.

Ahmed al-Ghamdi had been missing for approximately 9-days when his body was found yesterday. The story of al-Ghamdi had preoccupied public opinion and local news over the past week, with Saudi citizens working together to search for the missing child, and rewards being put forward for any information on his whereabouts.

Taif police force spokesman Lieutenant Salim Bin Sharaf al-Rabaei told Asharq Al-Awsat that the Taif police force had exerted tremendous efforts over the previous 9 days in search for the missing child. Lieutenant al-Rabaei also revealed that investigations into the young boy’s murder had revealed that his stepmother was linked to his disappearance. She is a 39-year old Saudi citizen, who following questioning by the police force confessed to striking the child with a stick and killing him.

The Taif police force spokesman also informed Asharq Al-Awsat that the accused had confessed to hiding the child’s body in a waste bag, and then dumping it in an abandoned building in another neighborhood. Al-Rabaei added that the investigation into this crime is still ongoing, and that a comprehensive report will be handed to the Saudi Department of Investigation and Prosecution as a prelude to bringing the defendant to trial. Lieutenant al-Rabaei stressed that Taif Police chief Major General Muslim al-Raheli and the two officers in charge of the case had closely followed up on all leads until the tragic circumstances surrounding Ahmed al-Ghamdi’s disappearance were revealed.

Asharq Al-Awsat also spoke with the mother of Ahmed al-Ghamdi, who has been divorced from her ex-husband for more than 4 years. She was in an extremely fragile psychological state and revealed that she had not seen her son since her divorce, as her ex-husband had prevented her from seeing her son since the divorce. She said that her feeling – as a mother – was that her son’s disappearance was connected to her ex-husband’s new wife. She demanded that her son’s killer be brought to justice and given the death penalty, and called for this to be carried out as soon as possible.

The people of Saudi Arabia had banded together in a remarkable manner in the search for Ahmed al-Ghamdi, posting messages on social networking websites such as Facebook and others, as well as utilizing SMS text messaging, to publicize the missing child’s disappearance and call for any information on his whereabouts.