The mystery surrounding the identity of two bodies of children found in a bag outside a mosque here this week was resolved Tuesday with the arrest of a 40-year-old Egyptian expatriate who was residing in the Kingdom illegally. The case was cracked when two women – the wife and sister of the Egyptian man – along with a 14-year-old Afghani girl, a 10-year-old boy, and two other girls aged 10 and 11 respectively turned themselves in at the Passports Department's deportation center as residency violators and hoping to go back to Egypt. The women and the children were formally taken into custody and referred to the Commission for Investigation and Prosecution. Upon interrogation, the two women confessed that the Afghan girl was kidnapped four years ago while she was helping her mother in a stall outside the Prophet's Mosque. The women in custody admitted that they were forced to go to the deportation center along with the children by the Egyptian man who was to follow them at the center later. The children whose bodies were found this week outside a mosque were the sons of the Egyptian. They had died three years ago from brain tumor and deformation in the chest. The father, investigations showed, kept the bodies at home fearing arrest as an illegal if he tried to bury them formally at a burial ground. The bodies were kept in a bag which was found at the roof of the house of the Egyptian during a raid. Col. Muhsin Al-Raddadi, Madina Police spokesman, said although the mother of the abducted girl recognized her as the one who went missing four years ago, the girl will undergo a procedural DNA test. The girl, Radyah, was kidnapped when the suspect's sister posing as a customer asked her mother's permission to take her to the hotel to give her money for the goods she bought. Radyah then disappeared. The suspect's sister was earlier also arrested in an unrelated case but was released later for lack of evidence.
