They said the land pirates put their hands illegally on empty government and private lands and sell them at cheap rates to Saudi and foreign buyers without any official papers and registration deeds.

They say the transactions are not documented on any formal papers, but just written on ordinary papers as a deal between the seller and the buyer.

The buyers will later discover that they have bought lands from people who do not actually own them, so they incur great losses, the sources said.

Much of the selling takes place now at Mukanaa area, about 16 km south of Makkah. The area is about two million square meters and will soon have electricity. This has made the area appealing to buyers, as stated by the sources.

Talking to Arab News, Salim Al-Abdali said the entire area belonged to his family, who has it officially registered in the Makkah governorate. He said early this year, a Saudi citizen brought heavy machinery to the land to level it, and started to divide it into small plots of 600 square meters each in order to sell them.

Al-Abdali said he entered into negotiations with the intruder to convince him that the land belonged to his family and that his encroachment on the land could subject him to legal action, but he did not listen.

Al-Abdali said the man offered to give him SR2,000 for each plot of land he sold, but he took the case to the committee on land encroachments in the governorate. “When nothing happened, I filed a second complaint. The man continues selling my land,” Al-Abdali said.

The intruder went further, placing signs on each piece of land and receiving interested buyers at his home every day after Asr prayer. “He put barbed wire fencing around the plots yet to be sold with the aim of selling them at a higher price later,” he said.