Makkah police has found two cases in which children were allegedly offered for sale. The HRC has requested clarification from police on the issue.
In the first case, officers of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice arrested an Indonesian woman while she was trying to sell a newborn baby.
The commission later handed over the woman and the baby to Ajyad Police for investigation. The police later transferred her case to the Bureau of Investigation and Prosecution.
Investigations are still on in order to determine why the woman was carrying the baby and whether she was attempting to sell the baby.
In a previous statement, the woman, who was living in the Kingdom illegally, said she brought the child from Jeddah in order to hand him over to his parents in Makkah.
In another case, police arrested two Saudis for employing two Nigerian children aged six and seven. The Saudis told police that there are work contracts signed by the children’s parents. They were then taken to Al-Mansour police station in Makkah and then to the Bureau of Investigation and Prosecution. Investigations proved that the Saudis were holding the contracts signed by the children’s parents who were in the Kingdom illegally.
The individuals who signed the contract as witnesses were also Nigerians. The bureau then released the Saudis, extended the jail term of the parents and witnesses to 35 days and the children were handed over to their mother.
The HRC is still awaiting the outcome of the bureau’s investigation about child trafficking in the Kingdom to take preventive action.
