MAKKAH: Overstayers are attempting to enter Makkah and the holy sites without Haj permits in order to perform the pilgrimage.
A Passport Department inspector at the Shumaisy checkpoint said he recently caught a Nigerian woman, who impersonated a compatriot who died last year to enter Makkah. “She showed a valid-looking iqama while passing the check-post in a car. As I strongly suspected foul play, I made a computer verification of her documents,” the official said. The woman asked him to let her go, saying she had already paid SR500 to the car driver to smuggle her in. She also claimed her friends in Madinah had given her the dead woman’s iqama.
The official also recalled another instance when he thwarted an old Saudi driver’s attempt to smuggle a man disguised as a woman and four Indonesian women into Makkah. They all had their faces covered.
The officer suspected there was something wrong with the passengers in the car even though the driver claimed the women were his relatives. They were taken inside the office for detailed checks. A female official checked them and discovered one of them was a man and the other four housemaids without iqamas.
The Indonesian man, who was coming from Jeddah, added that he had persuaded the maids to go with him to Makkah and taken SR250 from each of them.
“Then I arranged with the driver to take us all to Makkah for SR500. I had hoped that the old man would manage to overcome the scrutiny of the inspectors and bring us to Makkah safely,” he told Arab News at the detention center.
Assistant Commander of Checkpoints in Makkah Brig. Gen. Khaled Al-Harithy said if a Saudi attempted to smuggle pilgrims without permits to Makkah, he would be fined SR10,000 and his vehicle confiscated.
