Makkah Criminal Court acquits 13 defendants in Grand Mosque crane collapse

News Network
December 10, 2020

crane.JPG

Dubai, Dec 10: The Makkah Criminal Court on Wednesday issued a new ruling acquitting 13 defendants in the Grand Mosque Crane collapse case, including Saudi Binladin Group, Saudi media such as Okaz/Saudi Gazette reported.

In the new verdict, the court said it had found nothing new than what it had earlier ruled in the case.

It said it would send a copy of the verdict to the Court of Appeal to decide on the issue.

In an earlier verdict delivered on October 1, 2017, the Makkah Criminal Court had acquitted all the 13 defendants who were charged with negligence.

The court had said that the defendants are not criminally responsible for the incident in which 108 people lost their lives and another 238 were injured when a crane involved in the Grand Mosque expansion project collapsed on September 11, 2015.

The disaster was caused by heavy rains and thunderstorms, rather than human error or fault, the court had said in its previous judgement.

“The crane was in an upright, correct and safe position. There was no error committed by the accused, who had taken all the necessary safety precautions,” the court declared in its decision. The Attorney General challenged the decision and appealed against it.

In December 2017, however, the Appeals Court upheld the previous ruling of the Criminal Court. The Appeals Court said that the crane, though placed in a safe position, toppled due to a severe thunderstorm and violent winds. The court also directed the Criminal Court to re-examine the case.

The court issued the new verdict on Wednesday after re-examining the entire aspects of the crane crash.

As per the latest Saudi media reports, the court noted that the General Authority of Meteorology and Environmental Protection had issued a bulletin on weather conditions on the day of the accident and the day before it. The warning showed that the wind speed in the Red Sea ranged between one and 38 kilometres per hour only, and did not include warning of the weather conditions with a possibility of hurricanes.

The court noted that there was no mention in the lawsuit about the warning of the General Authority of Meteorology and Environmental Protection that this disaster would occur. The court also indicated that what happened in Makkah that day could be attached to a celestial phenomenon that was difficult to predict. As such, the defendants cannot be held culpable or the tragedy.

The Court of Appeal had stressed, in its earlier ruling, the need to clarify, define and know precisely the tasks of the safety division of the Haram expansion project. This is because the company which was implementing the project had an integrated department for monitoring weather fluctuations, which means that it was fully responsible for detecting and forecasting weather conditions and did not need to wait for meteorological reports.

The Court of Appeal also drew attention to the response of an official among the defendants that he was not informed of the outbreak of the storm on the day of the crane tragedy, as it occurred on Friday during which he was on leave. The appeals court’s remarks emphasised that none of the accused officials indicated that there was a special meteorology unit associated with the project.

The court also noted the dereliction of duty on the part of the Environmental Department affiliated to the Department of Safety and its role in collecting reports on weather conditions and preparing daily reports. The court also directed a first-grade court to examine this aspect of the incident.

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News Network
November 24,2025

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Israeli forces have pushed over the Syrian frontier, erecting a checkpoint and stopping vehicles in the southwestern city of Quneitra, in yet another breach of the Arab country’s sovereignty.

The violation took place on Sunday, when the troops made their way across the border, setting up the outpost near the Ain al-Bayda junction in northern Quneitra, Syrian outlets reported.

According to the al-Ikhbariya paper, an Israeli detachment positioned itself at the junction, halting cars and conducting searches.

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that three Israeli military vehicles then moved further into the northern countryside, deploying between the town of Jubata al-Khashab and the villages of Ofaniya and Ain al-Bayda. The agency added that a separate Israeli unit mounted a new incursion in the central region, approaching the villages of Umm Batina and al-Ajraf.

Residents said such activities have surged in recent months, pointing to Israeli advances onto farmland, leveling of extensive forested areas, arrests, and spread of mobile checkpoints.

The Israeli regime began markedly increasing its military aggression against Syria last year.

The escalation coincided with increasingly ferocious onslaughts throughout the country by the so-called Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Takfiri terrorist group, which the government of President Bashar al-Assad had confined to northwestern Syria. The HTS, however, managed to overthrow the government as the Israeli attacks would pummel the country’s civilian and defensive infrastructure.

Various reports have shown that, during the escalation, the regime conducted more than 1,000 airstrikes on the Syrian territory and over 400 ground raids into the south.

Following the collapse of the Assad government, Tel Aviv also widened its grip over the occupied Golan Heights by taking control of a demilitarized buffer zone, in defiance of a 1974 Disengagement Agreement. Earlier this month, senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the buffer zone, prompting expressions of alarm on the part of the United Nations.

The United States, the regime’s biggest ally, has, meanwhile, been fraternizing the HTS head Abu Mohammed al-Jolani amid the widely reported prospect of rapprochement with Tel Aviv.

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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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News Network
November 24,2025

israelsyra.jpg

Israeli forces have pushed over the Syrian frontier, erecting a checkpoint and stopping vehicles in the southwestern city of Quneitra, in yet another breach of the Arab country’s sovereignty.

The violation took place on Sunday, when the troops made their way across the border, setting up the outpost near the Ain al-Bayda junction in northern Quneitra, Syrian outlets reported.

According to the al-Ikhbariya paper, an Israeli detachment positioned itself at the junction, halting cars and conducting searches.

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that three Israeli military vehicles then moved further into the northern countryside, deploying between the town of Jubata al-Khashab and the villages of Ofaniya and Ain al-Bayda. The agency added that a separate Israeli unit mounted a new incursion in the central region, approaching the villages of Umm Batina and al-Ajraf.

Residents said such activities have surged in recent months, pointing to Israeli advances onto farmland, leveling of extensive forested areas, arrests, and spread of mobile checkpoints.

The Israeli regime began markedly increasing its military aggression against Syria last year.

The escalation coincided with increasingly ferocious onslaughts throughout the country by the so-called Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Takfiri terrorist group, which the government of President Bashar al-Assad had confined to northwestern Syria. The HTS, however, managed to overthrow the government as the Israeli attacks would pummel the country’s civilian and defensive infrastructure.

Various reports have shown that, during the escalation, the regime conducted more than 1,000 airstrikes on the Syrian territory and over 400 ground raids into the south.

Following the collapse of the Assad government, Tel Aviv also widened its grip over the occupied Golan Heights by taking control of a demilitarized buffer zone, in defiance of a 1974 Disengagement Agreement. Earlier this month, senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visited the buffer zone, prompting expressions of alarm on the part of the United Nations.

The United States, the regime’s biggest ally, has, meanwhile, been fraternizing the HTS head Abu Mohammed al-Jolani amid the widely reported prospect of rapprochement with Tel Aviv.

Comments

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