AL-JOUF: Marzouq Sulaiman Al-Sarhani and his wife Fakhriyah Muhammad Ziyab, whose days-old baby was stolen from the nursery of the Sakaka General Hospital around this time last year, were expecting a new baby boy who will be delivered in the coming few days.
The problem is the couple will have to deliver the baby at the same hospital they say is responsible for their painful and unresolved loss.
“We still hope that our stolen baby boy will be brought back to us. Our hopes were revived following the return of a stolen baby in Riyadh recently,” Al-Sarhani told Arab News.
The mother said she becomes more frightened every day now the time of delivery is near. “I suffer psychologically every time I pass near the general hospital here where my baby was stolen before I saw him,” she said.
The couple believe that the hospital has done nothing to increase security to ensure that babies aren’t taken away.
“We always pray to Allah to bring back our stolen baby to us,” said Al-Sarhani.
Their only daughter Farah could not wait to see her baby brother though she was still mourning the loss of her other brother.
To this day the family doesn’t know if the baby is alive or dead. Authorities have said that they consider the case still open.
Al-Sarhani told Arab News last September that he has filed a lawsuit against the Ministry of Health demanding SR60 million in compensation for the loss of his son.
Al-Sarhani said his baby was abducted because of negligence on the part of the hospital. He said when he went to the nursery to get the baby to show it to its mother the nurses refused his request, saying the baby was under observation.
A nurse at the hospital suspected a woman who came to the nursery four times saying the mother of the baby wanted to breast-feed her son. The baby was taken away while nurses were preoccupied with another newborn baby.
— With input by Hurriyah Abdullah
