MAKKAH: The Civil Status Undersecreteriat at the Ministry of Interior has launched an investigation into the identities of 23 children of a Saudi man who died 18 years ago in a traffic accident in Makkah. The man had married nine women and he was still married to two of them when he died. The sons and daughters are seeking national identification documents. Some of the late man's children discovered that documents were issued in their names to foreigners who were tried and deported after the sons and daughters sought to have documents issued by the Civil Status Department. Problems with documents and identity confirmations have made it difficult for the sons and daughters to get healthcare, education and places to live, one of the sons said. An official at the Civil Status Department said procedures for identifying the boys and girls are almost complete, except for the eldest son who has no birth certificate, and the fact that the deceased had incorrectly registered the boys to show that one wife was their mother. “They will be dealt with as per regulation,” the official said. Basheer Hasan Hawsawi, one of the sons and the legal representative of the family, said the family separated after the father died. “The case is 17 years old,” he said. “I live in an endowment; Muaz, my brother, lives alone in Arrusaifa, in Makkah, and his mother has died; mothers of Najwa, Ammar and Zulfa, some of my other siblings, have also died and those three live with their relatives in Makkah; two families, two mothers and their sons and daughters, live in Riyadh.” It has been a long, difficult struggle to get the documents issued, Hawsawi said. “When we asked for our identities to be registered at the Civil Status, we were asked to bring our oldest brother, Badriddin, who we went through a lot to find,” he said. “We discovered that his mother is a Sudanese woman who traveled to Sudan after she was divorced and took him with her when he was a baby. He came here after we approached him. He is 30 and married, and he was given a residency permit until his identification documents are issued.” Hawsawi said that six of the sons and daughters are registered on his father's family identification card and wondered why they have not been given national identification cards. “We find difficulties traveling and when we get sick, and some of us could not get an education because of problems with documents,” he said. Basheer said he complained to the Board of Grievances in Riyadh and is waiting for the suffering to end.
