Fake Haj firm robs 650 Arabs of SR1.6 million

October 7, 2014

Mina, Oct 7: A total of 650 pilgrims were found sleeping in a rundown private school in Al-Aziziah next to Mina without food, water and transport on Sunday, allegedly victims of a fake Haj firm.

The pilgrims, from various Arab countries, claimed they paid SR1.6 million to the operator in Buraidah, Qassim, to take them on the holy pilgrimage. They allegedly paid between SR2,000 and SR4,000 for transport, two meals a day and accommodation.

Some pilgrims claimed that the company in Qassim operated under other names in the region. They were allegedly transported in 13 buses to Al-Sail, where a company official apparently told them that they would have to wait until the day of Arafat before trying to enter the holy sites. This was because the police would not check Haj permits on that day.

The pilgrims said they were then forced to enter the holy sites in private cars. When they arrived in Mina on Thursday, Dhul Hijjah 8, they found that the company had not provided them transport between the holy sites, and no food. There were elderly people and children with the group. Some were sick and did not have money to buy food.

Some pilgrims claimed they had to hire their own transport to take them to Arafat on Friday. Others said that the company's director provided them with transport after they threatened to report him to the police. They said they were exhausted and hungry.

A few pilgrims said that after they returned to Mina from Arafat they contacted the company director to demand the accommodation he allegedly promised. However, when they went to the place where they were supposed to stay, it was a rundown private school without proper washing facilities and basic security. The school was so small, some had to sleep out in the yard, they claimed.

The pilgrims said a Saudi owned the company. However, when contacted the citizen claimed he was only an intermediary and that expatriates ran and owned the company, which included Egyptian, Sudanese and Pakistanis.

The pilgrims claimed that the Saudi man provided them with air-conditioning units after they threatened to report him to the police.

A worker from the company said these accusations were false, but admitted the company organized pilgrimages without permits.

He refused to answer further questions.

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UN condemns Israeli regime’s ‘organized torture’ against Palestinians

News Network

November 30,2025

The United Nations Committee against Torture (CAT) has condemned the Israeli regime for enforcing a policy of “organized torture” against Palestinians.

In a report published on Friday, CAT stated that the occupying regime enforces a deliberate policy of “organized and widespread torture and ill-treatment” against Palestinian abductees, particularly since October 7, 2023, when Israel launched its genocidal war on Gaza.

The committee expressed “deep concern over repeated severe beatings, dog attacks, electrocution, water-boarding, use of prolonged stress positions [and] sexual violence” inflicted on Palestinians.

Palestinian prisoners were degraded by “being made to act like animals or being urinated on,” systematically denied medical care, and subjected to excessive restraints, “in some cases resulting in amputation,” the report added.

CAT also condemned the routine application of “unlawful combatants law” to justify the prolonged detention without trial of thousands of Palestinian men, women, and children.

More than 10,000 Palestinians, including women and children, are currently held in Israeli prisons, according to Palestinian and international human rights groups, with 3,474 Palestinians in “administrative detention,” meaning they are imprisoned without trial for indefinite periods.

The report highlighted the “high proportion of children who are currently detained without charge or on remand,” noting that while Israel sets the age of criminal responsibility at 12, even younger children have been abducted.

Children designated as security prisoners face severe restrictions on family contact, may be subjected to solitary confinement, and are denied access to education, in clear violation of international law.

The committee further suggested that Israel’s policies across the Occupied Territories constitute collective torture against the Palestinian population.

“A range of policies adopted by Israel in the course of its continued unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory amounts to cruel, inhuman or degrading living conditions for the Palestinian population,” the report said.

On Thursday, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas condemned the systematic killing and torture of Palestinian abductees in Israeli prisons, urging international action to halt these abuses.

Citing human rights data, Hamas stated that 94 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli prisons since the start of Tel Aviv’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“This reflects an organized criminal approach that has turned these prisons into direct killing grounds to eliminate our people,” the resistance movement said.

Hamas called on the international community, the UN, and human rights organizations to immediately pressure Israel to end crimes against prisoners and uphold their rights as guaranteed by all international conventions and norms.

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