The director general of prisons, Gen. Ali Al-Harthi, told Okaz all the victims of the Riyadh prison fire had been identified and the prison staff would notify the families. The general should announce the names of the dead and injured publicly.
He should tell us why they were imprisoned and how long for, to put an end to the rumors that are now being spread and also to silence those who want to use the incident to smear the Kingdom.
That is one thing. The other thing is that I wish the general had not complimented the efforts of the civil defense, the prison staff or the ambulance staff. Nothing about this tragic case justifies such compliments.
It seems that there was negligence involved, whether the fire was started deliberately or whether it was the result of a short-circuit. Fires on such a scale don’t break out all at once. They start out small and then spread.
The fire started in ward 19. Either no one noticed it or no one cared about it. The fire spread, and by then it had produced so much smoke that it was difficult for the civil defense to control it.
As a result more than 67 prisoners died. According to civil defense officials, all victims died of smoke inhalation and no one was burned or killed by the flames. Is it possible that the smoke reached this level of density without anyone noticing or acting to save the prisoners?
This question and many others will be on the minds of many of the victims’ families. The Interior Ministry has formed a committee to answer these questions.
Results will be announced in the next two days for people anxious to know exactly what happened at the prison on that day.
They are also waiting for swift punishment if negligence is discovered to prevent anything like this from happening in the future.
Then there is the legal question. Will the families of the dead prisoners be compensated or recognized as victims of a tragedy? I do not know if the committee has this issue in mind at all, but it is a question that needs an immediate answer.
- Arab News Local Press 20 September 2003
