The Saudi national who escaped from his kidnappers in Lebanon three days ago arrived safely in Madinah yesterday.
Khalid Al-Qurashi was kidnapped on the Lebanese-Syrian border a month ago at gunpoint by a gang that had demanded SR 100,000 for his release.
Khalid’s brother Abdul Muhsin Al-Qurashi, in a telephone interview with Arab News, said Khalid had escaped after waking up for morning prayers and finding the gang members asleep.
Abdul Muhsin said Khalid, a government employee, walked a long distance using a rough road between mountains and farms to throw the kidnappers off his trail.
He then found some children grazing sheep and asked them to take him to their father. When he explained his situation, the family welcomed him into their house.
“Khalid used the host’s phone to send a message to a relative who got in touch with me. I immediately called the number and spoke to Khalid,” Abdul Muhsin said.
The family then moved Khalid, with the help of some people, from the Syrian-Lebanese border into Lebanon.
“My brother repaid the family’s hospitality with some money,” he said.
Khalid’s ordeal began when he received a telephone call from a relative of his ex-wife, a Syrian, demanding that he pay SR 100,000 if he wanted his daughter back. Khalid, according to Abdul Muhsin, was married to a Syrian woman 10 years ago. His then pregnant wife had wanted to go to Syria to see her family, but she never came back and eventually gave birth to a baby girl.
Khalid had told the relative that he was not in a position to pay such a huge amount.
They eventually agreed on SR 10,000 and arranged for the payment in one of the border villages.
He was kidnapped when he arrived in the village.
Saudi man’s Lebanon abduction ordeal ends
