JEDDAH, 26 October 2004 — “It was stolen from in front of my house in broad daylight,” said Zainab Al-Jifree. Car theft is becoming a normal occurrence in Jeddah, but in Zainab’s case it took some interesting twists and turns.

It happened almost a year ago. The car, a Crown Toyota 82, was stolen during noon prayer in the Fawwaz neighborhood in southern Jeddah. She reported the theft immediately to police, but her mistake was not taking a copy of the report. Four months later, she called the police asking if there was any news about her car.

“Because I didn’t have a copy of the report, they said I didn’t report it. So, during this whole time, apparently they didn’t look for it,” Zainab told Arab News.

She filed another report of the theft. A few months later, the police called and said that they located the car in Madinah and she should pick it up herself from there. “I refused. I’m an elderly woman and none of my male relatives have the time to go to Madinah and bring my car home. How can they expect that from me or anyone else? It’s their duty,” she said.

They also told her that they have jailed the man who stole the car but then released him on bail. “How can they do that without telling me? I haven’t dropped the charges.”

Shortly afterward, police called her again and said that they have brought the car from Madinah and the man who was driving it. She went to the police station and asked the man how he got hold of her car and he told her that he bought it from the police auction yard in Jeddah. The law allows police to auction a stolen car after one year from the date of recovering it and if no one came forward to claim it.

“All this happened without anyone telling me. Then they dared ask me to compensate the man for what he paid for the car as if that was my problem,” said Zainab.

She refused to pay him and the car stayed with the police. Six months passed and the man would not cooperate in releasing the car to her. Finally, she obtained a permit from the colonel at the police station who sympathized with her after she made a scene, to get her car from the police yard. There the supervisor asked her to pay SR750 for the time the car was impounded. Again she refused to pay and went back to the colonel who called the yard supervisor and sent a policeman with her so she could get her car without paying. The car was covered with dust and the battery was dead, so she had it towed out at her expense, but the registration papers were missing, so she went to the police station again and asked to have a temporary document in place of the lost papers.

People told her she is lucky to have her car back and in one piece, but after a whole year in this saga, Zainab feels that she should be the one compensated for all the trouble.

Although a police source refused to say how many cars are stolen in Jeddah everyday, it is apparent that car theft is on the rise. According to a United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, covering the period 1998-2000, 5,573 cars were stolen in Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom came 31st on the list of top 100 countries in the number of car thefts. The US, UK and Japan were the top three respectively.

The police source said that Jeddah’s southern neighborhoods and the center have the highest rates of car thefts. “Mostly foreigners commit these burglaries, particularly Africans and some Asian nationals,” he said.

The most common cars to be stolen, about 60 percent, are Cressida and Camry, followed by any regular gearshift car. After the theft is reported to the police, the police center where the theft occurred is informed and the central operation command distributes a report of the car’s description to all police cars which start by checking the dismantling, selling and auctioning locations and junk yards. There are garages that cooperate with the thieves in dismantling the stolen cars for parts, especially those in demand, and then discard the body of the car in a remote highway.

“It takes about four hours to dismantle a car, and it’s difficult for cops to follow on each car and keep a tab on the garages because of the shortage of personnel,” said a source.

Cars are also stolen for joyrides by reckless youths. But the most serious problem car theft presents, however, is in using them for planned criminal activities including terrorism.