This demonstrates the length the violators have gone to in their defiance of the law and the authorities.
According to the chairman of the land encroachment committee in Makkah, Nasser Al-Nifaie, any plot without an ownership deed or any development that has no official permit will be considered an encroachment on land belonging to the state.
The land sharks begin their operation by looking for land in areas that are sparsely populated.
They will then level the lands before bringing the heavy machinery in to develop the land quickly. They use illegal foreign workers because they are cheap. They will construct courtyards, buildings and encircle the lands with barbed wires and plants.
This illegal work is usually done early morning or late in the evening when they will not be discovered. They will insert marks with the number of each piece of land. They will also build many random houses to mislead the land encroachment committee into thinking that these areas are legitimate and inhabited.
They receive buyers in the evenings, which is an ideal time since members of the committee would have finished their work by 2:30 p.m.
On many occasions, tensions bubble over between violators and the members of the committee, often escalating into physical violence and shootings.
These confrontations frequently happen. An instance of this was when the committee went to the Al-Khawajat area along the Jeddah-Makkah Expressway.
The encroachers there not only called them bad names, but opened fire at them. Women as well as men got involved. They threw stones at the committee members when they were about to demolish a 900 square meter courtyard that had been built illegally.
One of the land sharks tried to deceive the committee by claiming that there were women living in a house about to be demolished. When officials went inside, they found no one there and they went ahead with destroying the building.
Al-Nifaie said the committee makes field tours and deals with potential violators by giving them a week either to present official deeds or vacate the area.
“We do not hesitate in demolishing any illegal building,” he said.
The chairman said deeds and documents are verified in court before they are accepted by the committee, which comprises representatives from the Makkah governorate, the municipality, the police and the ministries of finance and agriculture.
