They were left in Jeddah after organizers from the Riyadh-based Al-Khidma Haj Group were arrested by police for trafficking in fraudulent permits. They waited in different hotels of Jeddah for their buses to arrive and take them to Mina for the first leg of the pilgrimage. Some buses did turn up, but the pilgrims were turned away by the security forces after the permits were found to be fraudulent.
“We paid SR5,000 per pilgrim,” said Farooq Mohammad Khan, a Pakistani academic from Riyadh. “I paid a little less than SR25,000 for my wife and three children. We were divided into various groups. We came in different coaches from Riyadh to Jeddah and were made to stay at furnished apartments in Jeddah. We arrived in Jeddah two days ago. We were told that buses would take us to Mina on Sunday night. We waited and waited, and when the buses came some of us could board the buses only to be turned away from the checkpoints.”
Khan said they are upset, but they have no idea what to do next. “The people that we were in contact with have switched off their cell phones. We have been told that all of them have been arrested. We are still in a state of ihram. Many of us have removed their ihram (the two pieces of seamless cloth) and have decided to sacrifice a sheep as a penance for violating a religious injunction.”
The Khan family, however, decided not to take off their ihram and to make another attempt to get into Mina or Arafat Monday morning. “We are trying. We have no papers except our iqamas. We will take a chance. If we can make it to Arafat, nothing like it. If not, then we will have no choice but to go back to Riyadh dejected.”
He said it has been a very bad experience because the group of 250 pilgrims included women and children. Khan admitted that they had not checked up on the Haj organizers. “A friend of mine recommended this group to me. He said he had traveled with them last year and that he had a wonderful experience. It was simply a word-of-mouth thing. Now we realize it was our mistake.”
Khan said the group seemed genuine and very organized. “They conducted very informative seminars on how to conduct all the rituals associated with Haj. Nothing indicated that these were fake or shady people.”
According to Khan and other victims, the man at the center of it all is a Riyadh-based Pakistani national and a medical doctor by profession. “He is the one we all knew about. We don’t know if he was the middleman or the actual organizer. The fact is all of us dealt with him. Initially, they asked us to pay in cash. When we told them that that was not possible they then provided us with an account number, and we paid into the account.”
The victims say all the organizers have been arrested, and police are conducting an inquiry. Some of the duped victims have approached police in Jeddah for help. According to what the victims are hearing, the organizers failed to get permits from the proper authorities, so they approached someone else who took SR400,000 from them and furnished fraudulent permits.
“This is such a shame,” said angry victim Farha Shamim. “We started this journey with so much hope. The decision to perform Haj is taken after meticulous planning. It is not a one-day decision. We were planning months in advance for this journey. All this has left us in a state of shock. How can people do such a thing? How can they issue fake permits? It is incomprehensible. This is like playing with the guests of God. Are they not afraid of divine consequences?”
The government has repeatedly advised pilgrims to check the legality of Haj organizers before dealing with them.
“This is a classic example. These pilgrims did not know who they were dealing with; their friends told them he was the best guy in town, and they went blindly to him,” said Brig. Suleiman Al-Harithy of the Passport Department. “Severe punishment will be meted out to the forgers.”
