RIYADH, 28 December 2007 — “I could not imagine that such things would happen in Saudi Arabia,” said Sierra Leone’s Ambassador Alhaji Amadu D. Tejan-Sie, as he showed Arab News around his house, which was burgled while he was away in Makkah during Haj. The ambassador, who has been in the Kingdom for the past ten years, described the burglary as unprecedented.
“The Saudi security forces seem to be overstretched as they were concentrating their attention on the pilgrims’ safety and earlier on combating terrorism.” He said that unlike in the past when patrolling around the diplomats’ residence used to be on a regular basis, it had been scaled back recently. The police outpost outside his residence in Hay Al-Mursalat was unmanned while he was away. There was no sign of the police even when Arab News visited his residence yesterday. However, the Olaya police took photographs and collected fingerprints from his house on Wednesday.
Tejan-Sie said he would report the matter to the Saudi Foreign Ministry when it reopens after the Eid holidays on Saturday. The ambassador pointed out that even in Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, patrolling around the diplomats’ residence is done around the clock.
A visit to his house showed the scale of the damage inflicted by the burglars. The whole villa was ransacked, with all the gifts, including a costly watch presented by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah, missing. Laptops, video cameras, jewelry, hi-fi systems were stolen, while the belongings seem to have been searched meticulously. The locks were broken, suitcases rifled, and things stacked up in a heap in the rooms. It looked as though an earthquake had turned everything in the house upside down.
Not content with carrying off a carload of stolen property, the thieves seemed to derive vicarious pleasure from his evil act by scrawling on the wall in Arabic, “kul aam antum bakhair, 2007. With compliments, your thief.”
The fact that none of the neighbors in that area had any clue about when the theft took place suggests that the culprits had the house under surveillance for quite some time. He or they entered the villa by scaling the wall leaving footprints behind. The theft was apparently committed at night, when it becomes quite chilly during winter leaving the streets deserted. There was also no patrolling in the ambassador’s absence. The combination of these various factors prepared the ground for his criminal act.
