SANAA, 10 September 2003 — Border guards in Jizan shot dead two Yemeni smugglers after they illegally crossed the border into Saudi territory, Yemeni police sources said yesterday.
The two men were gunned down in two separate incidents on Friday in an area north of the Yemeni border crossing at Haradh, police officials told Arab News.
Saudi guards opened fire at Hadi Salim Mestabani, 30, as he crossed into Jizan, killing him instantly, one police official said. He added that the man was carrying two bags of qat, a mild stimulant widely planted and chewed in Yemen but prohibited in the Kingdom.
The smuggler “apparently defied orders to surrender,” said the official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Later in the day, Saudi guards gunned down another man identified as Abdullah Muhammad Qutbi, 38, who was trying to smuggle subsidized flour into the Kingdom using a donkey.
A third smuggler drowned Saturday when flash floods hit a valley in the northern Yemeni province of Hajja as he was driving goods into Saudi territories.
Hajja is a launch pad for smuggling to Saudi Arabia, a flourishing business particularly for qat and weapons dealers, who use unemployed young villagers as mules for their contraband.
Saudi authorities report the capture of thousands of infiltrators and smugglers and seizure of large quantities of drugs and weapons every year along the 1,800-kilometer border with Yemen.
Acting on joint security cooperation pact, Yemen in June deployed more than 3,000 soldiers along the Saudi border to help curb infiltration and smuggling into the Kingdom.
Meanwhile, according to Okaz daily, Yemen has arrested a Saudi fugitive wanted by the Kingdom on suspicion of belonging to the militant Al-Qaeda group.
Okaz daily quoted Abdulrahman Salem Al-Ghamdi, the father of Bandar Al-Ghamdi, as saying Bandar had fled to Yemen along with his pregnant wife but was later arrested by authorities there.
He did not say when his son was arrested. Bandar Al-Ghamdi is on a list of 19 suspected Al-Qaeda militants planning attacks in Saudi Arabia. The list was issued a few days before suicide bombings in Riyadh in May which killed 35 people and which are blamed on the Al-Qaeda network.
Ghamdi said his son’s wife had given birth in Yemen and would return to Saudi Arabia with the child. “She telephoned me and confirmed my son was arrested by Yemeni authorities,” he said. Okaz said Riyadh was in touch with Sanaa over Ghamdi.
