The owner of a cattle farm south of the Jeddah- Makkah Expressway has complained that the municipality' Land Violations Committee (LVC) is out to demolish his property. Farm owner Adel Mohammad Al-Harbi said that he had not been in breach of any law and was waiting for the Shariah Court in Jeddah to issue him a property deed for the land. Al-Harbi said that his 60,000 cattle had become vulnerable to theft after sections of the farm fence were removed. He added that the LVC had also removed decades-old trees from the land. “I bought the land from well-known people in Usailah and I have had a temporary ownership document since October 2008,” Al-Harbi said. “But I was surprised when they started demolishing it, which has caused me losses of over one million riyals.” Al-Harbi claims that the committee threatened to continue demolishing the remainder of the farm if he fails to vacate it. “I'll lose more than ten million riyals if they continue their demolition,” he said. “The farm is located on illegal land and we warned the owner to vacate it before we began demolition work on parts of it,” said Sameer Basabrin, head of the LVC. “We will continue demolition if he fails to vacate the property, and we will confiscate the cattle.”
