The plaintiffs, who say the sinking of the ferry was due to gross negligence on the part of the ship's crew and the company, El Salam Maritime Transport.
Out of 1,312 passengers and 96 crew members, only 388 survived.
The previous suit ended with the acquittal of several “concerned officials” and the owner of El Salam Maritime Transport, Mamdouh Ismail, who was sentenced to seven years in prison but did not go to prison.
Out of 99 Saudis on board, only 45 survived. The remaining 54 Saudis drowned.
Speaking to Arab News Thursday, a number of Saudi lawyers said they tried last week to reopen the case to benefit from the air of freedom prevailing in Egypt these days.
They said they were also prompted by the dissolution last week of the defunct ruling National Party, of which Ismail was a member. He was also a member of the People’s Council (Parliament) through appointment by the government.
Muhammad Al-Mashout, a Saudi survivor, described the drowning of the ship as a painful experience and a tragedy he would never forget as long as he lived.
“Like many others, I was upset by the lenient verdicts against those responsible for the tragedy, foremost of them the ship’s owner,” he said.
Al-Mashout, an employer of local Arabic daily Okaz, said there was evidence incriminating the captain, the crew, port employees, communications officers and the management of the company that operated the ship.
He said the captain did not send an SOS message and did not ask for help from the ports and the nearby ships. “The captain's insistence not to take back the ship to Dhiba seaport from which it sailed was very suspicious. Though the ship caught fire only an hour and a half after it took off, he continued the voyage to Egypt and refused to return to the Saudi port,” he said.
Al-Mashout said the captain had enough time to call for help but he did not.
“The ship was burning from 9 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. Life vests were not given to us. We had to break open the cupboards to get them. The lifeboats were not deployed,” he recounted.
Al-Mashout said he believed that they were going back to Dhiba when fire broke out in the ship only to be surprised that the vessel was still on her way to Egypt. He said he jumped into the water to join the passengers of a rubber boat and remained in water until the evening of the next day.
He claimed that the captain escaped in a small boat about 90 minutes before the ship sank despite his name being listed among the missing persons.
“His body was not found. If the sailors who survived the incident had been properly questioned, a thread leading to him might have surfaced,” he said.
