Saudi Gazette report JEDDAH — The family of a nine-year-old boy who drowned on May 8 after falling into a sewage tank in front of a building under repair in Jeddah accused the Civil Defense of cover-up and called for a new investigation into the case. The father, Abdullah Babikir, claimed that the contractor covered the tank with wood and put stones on top of it to give the false impression that no one would ever fall into it unless he removed the heavy wood and stones. The father told the Dammam-based Alsharq newspaper that the tank was covered with flimsy wood, which broke down when his son stepped on it. “The moment Abdulrahman put his feet on the covering, it gave way and he fell to his death into the tank,” Babikir said. Narrating the death of his son, the father said: “At about 3.15 p.m. on Wednesday May 8, my children's uncle Abdullah Batarfi came to take them to spend the weekend with their grandfather as was his custom every week. “Abdulrahman was the first to come down. He told his uncle that he would go to a nearby shop to buy him an ice-cream. When the mother and the other children came down there was no trace of Abdulrahman. His mother thought that he was with his uncle who on his part thought that he was with her. “We started looking for him everywhere but could not find him. The neighbors also took part in the search. They came to the sewage tank and found it tightly closed with strong wood and stones. I told the people around me that I am 90 percent sure that my son had fallen down into the sewage tank. “The contractor told me that this was not possible as he had himself closed the tank covering it with strong pieces of wood early morning. At this very moment, Azzam Al-Turkistani, a four-year-old child, came out of his building and told us that he saw Abdulrahman falling down into the sewage tank.” The father said they called the police, who told them that they could not come before four hours. “I called the Civil Defense who arrived at the scene very quickly and pulled my son out of the sewage tank. By the time my son was already dead,” he said. The father said they took the body to a private hospital. “A Civil Defense staffer wrote a report about the incident in which he said there was no criminal act behind the death, which was the result of an accident,” Babikir said. Civil Defense spokesman Col. Saeed Sarhan denied any criminal motive behind the death of the young boy, which was purely accidental and said the investigation was still being continued. The father said when he asked the investigating officer if he had written in his report that the contractor had misled them by covering the tank after the incident, the officer answered that he had not. “The officer did not care much and did not investigate properly,” he alleged. The father also claimed that a representative of the owner of the building under repair met him inside the Civil Defense building and offered him SR50,000 if he dropped the case. “The Civil Defense officials asked me to accept the offer and advised me against taking the case to the court because it will take a long time to settle,” he said. The farther said the building was being repaired without a license from the municipality, which stopped work on it until the investigations were completed. He said he would appoint a lawyer to withdraw the case from the Civil Defense because he believed it had a criminal side to it and take it instead to the court to regain his legal rights.
