JEDDAH, 21 April 2005 — Thieves are not sparing the mourners these days. Whenever there is a death in the family, these ingenious thieves make it a point to show up there pretending to be in deep grief. They make it a point to take advantage of the three-day mourning that follows the funeral.
Maha Fageeh, a middle aged housewife, spoke to Arab News about her encounter with such heartless people who have come to be known as funeral thieves.
“We were in terrible grief after the death of my father-in-law. It was time for dinner and everybody was busy preparing food, eating or leaving. Two unknown women, covering their faces entered the house; the first one asked for my sister-in-law claiming she wanted to offer her condolences. Then she asked if we could lend her some money.
“The other woman meanwhile went into the house moving all around the place. This raised our suspicion. Ten minutes later, I heard from my husband that a man wearing an abaya was caught by the police and that they were searching for two women who accompanied him in the neighborhood.
“We became terrified and started searching for the two unwelcome intruders, but the two were gone without a trace. Later in the night, we discovered that three or four cell phones were missing, as also two purses that belonged to our guests. What a shameful thing for them to do with a grieving family!”
Najat Saleem faced a similar situation when her husband died recently. She said: “The day was spent in tears when my husband died. The house was opened of course for people who wanted to come and console us. There were a lot of people, but I was too stressed out and exhausted to know who came, who left early and who stayed. At night I was sleeping in the same room with my eldest daughter when we heard noises of men whispering outside our bedroom. I couldn’t think of anything; the man of the house was dead now. However, my daughter managed to call our neighbor for help. Thank God they came immediately and caught the thieves while they were trying to escape from the backyard holding bags of my jewelry, some electronic gadgets, and money that was kept in my husband’s office in the house.”
Police who came afterward to arrest the robbers warned Najat about such crimes. “They told me they have caught three men dressed in women’s clothes in the same neighborhood when a person died a few weeks earlier. The days of mourning are the perfect time for thieves to barge into the house they want to burgle without anyone noticing. They enter your home while you’re grieving and busy with your guests. Then they make their plans and draw maps of your house to break in afterward. They just grab whatever they can lay their hands on while your guests are eating or praying, and leave without making a fuss,” she said.
A horrified Najat said the hand of the robber must be amputated as it’s prescribed in our religion and people should hear about such punishment more often. “Severe punishment will make the thieves think twice before committing such inhuman crimes,” she said.
With more and more funeral thieves on the prowl, some mourning families even hire security guards these days to ward off such unpleasant and embarrassing incidents.
