MADINAH: The prime suspect in the kidnapping of an Afghan girl four years ago was deported shortly after the crime took place because the girl’s mother could not identify her at the time.
According to a report in yesterday’s Al-Madinah newspaper, Jamalah was deported after police dropped the charge of kidnapping Raziah for lack of evidence.
The Egyptian woman returned to the Kingdom later under a false name and lived in Madinah illegally. She was eventually re-arrested on charges of defrauding a number of moneychangers.
“The authorities let her go (four years ago), as Raziah’s mother failed to identify Jamalah as the veiled Egyptian woman with whom she sent her daughter,” the daily said quoting a police source.
The mother, an Afghan woman who sells used clothes, said an Egyptian woman customer approached her and asked that her daughter go with her to collect the money for the clothes she bought because she had forgotten to bring cash.
The girl was not seen again until a recent and macabre discovery of human remains left at a mosque led to the arrest of Jamalah’s brother and the subsequent reunification of the girl with her family.
Jamalah allegedly confessed to police that she made the girl accompany her to her brother Junaidi’s house in Al-Gharbiah district and then kept her as a stolen child.
It was the discovery of the remains of Junaidi’s two boys (estimated ages 3 and 4) left in a bag in front of a mosque that led to an investigation and the discovery of the girl. Junaidi claimed that his boys were born with a life-threatening condition (which was not named in the report) and had died. According to police, Junaidi told them that he, his wives and sister were illegal residents in the Kingdom and therefore didn’t want to report the deaths out of risk of being arrested.
The reason for leaving the remains in front of the mosque this week, according to the report, was that the family was trying to leave the Kingdom and hoped the remains of the two boys would be given proper burials.
“Our husband told us that the police would never discover who put (the remains) there and that we were now free to return to Egypt. He also sold all the furniture in our apartment,” one of Junaidi’s wives told Al-Madinah newspaper.
Junaidi had already sent one of his wives to Egypt and reportedly told police that he had prepared fake documents to conceal the identity of Raziah. He had assigned her a new name, Ghada Ibrahim.
Raziah, brimming with joy upon her return to her real family, told Al-Madinah that Junaidi’s wives physically abused her and wouldn’t let her out of her room. The girl claims the women only allowed her to bathe once a week and that the use of soap was forbidden.
“They also told me not to go out of the house because police were looking for me,” she said. “They said my mother had committed a serious crime and the whole family was deported.”
She also claimed that the husband attempted on numerous occasions to sexually assault her, but that the women prevented him.
The girl reportedly no longer speaks her native Afghan language and speaks Arabic with an Egyptian dialect.
