He said Saudi authorities have been entrusted to handle the issue in a proper manner. The 26-year-old Saudi scholarship student was killed while he was visiting his maternal uncles in the restive Syrian city of Homs on Monday.
His body was buried instantly but exhumed later and handed over to some unknown agency, Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper reported, quoting Bandar.
Speaking to the newspaper, Bandar said he had received phone calls from some well-informed sources in Homs confirming that his son’s body was exhumed.
“It happened when the Syrian authorities found that the incident had turned sensitive following media attention that sparked outrage. The authorities then contacted directly my son’s relatives asking them to receive the body but they refused to do so saying that the matter is being handled by Saudi authorities officially,” he said.
Bandar urged the Saudi authorities to bring Hussein’s body home. Commenting on reports of the exhumation of Hussein’s body, Bandar said: “It is sacrilege.”
He added: “I refused to receive the body because the case is now being handled by the Saudi authorities, represented by the leadership, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Saudi Embassy in Damascus. The Kingdom’s leaders offered their condolences and are helping me out in every way. I have asked them to bring the body home in order to bury it on Saudi soil,” he said.
Bandar recalled that he had almost yielded to the request of Hussein’s maternal relatives to bury the body in Homs before it decomposed.
“But soon after their request, I got information from Homs that his body was buried and then exhumed and handed over to an unknown agency. There have been no complaints against him,” he said, adding that Hussein was a final year mechanical engineering student at Britain’s Derby University. “He was an excellent student with good grades and conduct,” Bandar said.
He thanked the Saudi authorities for intervening quickly in the case with a promise to the bereaved relatives of Hussein that all steps would be taken to bring the body home as well as to punish the perpetrators of the crime.
Saudi Arabia has demanded an explanation from Damascus for what it called a "sinful attack" on one of its citizens. In a statement, carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, a Saudi Embassy official in Damascus said that the Kingdom was following this sinful attack with great concern.
“The embassy had contacted Syrian officials over the incident, requesting details on the circumstances of the crime and demanding the arrest and punishment of the perpetrators,” the official said.
Omar Al-Anzi, a relative, confirmed information contained in a YouTube video clip regarding Hussein Al-Anzi’s death is correct. According to the video, Syrian security forces fired a volley of bullets at Hussein and his body was riddled with bullet holes. The security forces perpetrated the atrocity when he showed them his Saudi passport at a checkpoint in Homs.
Born in 1985, Hussein Al-Anzi had left for UK for higher studies under King Abdullah Scholarship Program. He attended preparatory language course at a university in Coventry City before joining the University of Derby.
