JEDDAH, 13 November 2005 — Twenty-three-year-old Mufareh Abdullah Al-Ghamdi went scuba diving with his friends on the first day of Eid. His mother, Amal, was preparing the home they shared for later festivities. Having worked overtime in her job at a residential compound last month, she was looking forward to her son’s return from a diving trip to show him the new clothes she had just bought for him for Eid.

For a day and a half, she waited either for his call or for him to return; however, neither Mufareh nor the call came. Instead, on Friday afternoon, a telephone call from the Coast Guard informed her that her son had drowned, 26 hours earlier and that his body had just been found.

“I was sitting at home with friends and family celebrating Eid and my son was dead at the bottom of the sea. None of his friends called me nor his brother to tell us that he was missing. He was with five so-called friends when he died, and I put the responsibility on them,” the grieving mother told Arab News.

Mufareh was diving with Abdul Latif Al-Mineri, owner of Divers World, a small dive store on Jeddah’s Prince Sultan Street. Also in the group were Abdul Latif’s brother, Abdullah, and two other young men.

According to Abdul Latif, Abdullah and Mufareh were low on air and decided to leave the group underwater and return to shore.

“I saw my brother and Mufareh rise up near the surface from where I was at 15 meters. They reached the surface but were about 25 meters away from one another. That was the last I saw of them since I continued the dive for another 15 minutes. When all of us had surfaced, Mufareh was nowhere to be found,” said Abdul Latif.

According to Abdul Latif, they immediately notified the Coast Guard who responded within 20 minutes by sending boats and jeeps to patrol the shoreline. Seven hours later, Coast Guard divers were sent to the scene but decided that conditions were too rough for an underwater night dive.

“When the sun rose the next morning, the Coast Guard divers began their search. By 3:30 p.m. (25 hours after he was last seen) they had not found him. Then I went down with them and we quickly found him. He was wearing only his diving suit, one fin and a weight belt. His other fin, mask, snorkel, gloves, buoyancy jacket, breathing regulator and air tanks were missing and have not yet been found,” Abdul Latif said.

According to veteran scuba diving instructor, Ahmad Shaker, the fact that he was still wearing his weight belt when he was found, tells me that he most probably took off his buoyancy jacket before taking off his weight belt. The negatively buoyant weights most likely caused him to sink quickly. “This is the kind of mistake that uncertified, inexperienced or untrained divers make,” he said.

According to Mufareh’s mother, her son had never enrolled in a scuba diving class and did not own a single piece of scuba diving equipment, but he “always managed to get equipment from Abdul Latif and the group he was with when he died.”

Abdul Latif confirmed to Arab News that it was his store that lent Mufareh the diving equipment he was using when he died. “Mufareh took a class here seven months ago with a couple of instructors. It wasn’t anything official, because he couldn’t afford the lessons but he knew how to dive,” Abdul Latif told Arab News.

When Arab News asked Abdul Latif for Mufareh’s scuba diving student file or the name and telephone number of the certifying instructor, Abdul Latif stalled the interview and has so far refused to return calls from us.

According to international regulations by the Professional Association of Diving Instructors, a licensed diving store is allowed to rent equipment to, and fill the air tanks of, certified scuba divers only after seeing proof of certification.

“That did not happen here. My son apparently never had any proper training. He thought that he was in good hands because he was diving with a dive shop owner. They lent my son the equipment that resulted in his drowning,” Amal told Arab News.

The Coast Guard and Ministry of the Interior are investigating Mufareh’s death and it is not yet clear whether formal charges will be filed against Divers World and Abdul Latif Al-Mineri.