[gallery td_select_gallery_slide="slide" ids="60174,60173,60172"] Abdul Aziz Al-Rabei Okaz/Saudi Gazette SIX young Saudis recently had a terrifying experience when they traveled to Turkey. The six men were deported to the Kingdom after a 10-hour ordeal at Istanbul's Sabiha Gokcen Airport where they had been subjected to various forms of harassment and abuse. The Turkish authorities apparently did this on suspicion of their suspected links to terrorist groups but without citing any explicit evidence. The young Saudis said they had gone through several investigation procedures and the airport officials treated them as if they were criminals. They complained that the Saudi Embassy in Turkey ignored their appeal for intervention to end their ordeal. Ahmad Al-Areefi, one of the victims, recounted their harrowing experience. "Accompanied by five of my cousins, I left Jeddah on May 5 for Turkey. We landed at Sabiha Airport in Istanbul at around 1 p.m. and went through the immigration procedures. Of the six-member group, I was the last one in the queue. The immigration officer stamped my passport and returned it to me. However, to my astonishment, the officer then asked me to wait for a few minutes and not to leave the counter. Then an airport security officer came and took me to a room where I saw they had brought in all my personal belongings, including my passport and cash. They asked me whether my destination was only Istanbul or elsewhere," Al-Areefi said. "One of the officers laughed wildly and in a frightening way when they asked me this. Then they took me to another room, which is supposedly an office for investigations, where I had undergone thorough security checks by three officers for around half an hour. I had to remain in the room for another one and a half hours. Then, they asked me about those accompanying me. I explained to them about my cousins and showed them our hotel booking details. Later, the officers interrogated all my five cousins separately. I told the officers that all of us worked in the Saudi civil service." Al-Areefi said one of the investigators told him that a video clip purportedly circulated by Daesh (the so-called IS) was spotted on his mobile. "I denied this vehemently and challenged him to prove this baseless allegation. The security officer reacted with a smile and at once left the room. After a few minutes, another officer came and told me in English: ‘You are banned from entering Turkey as you are here under suspicious circumstances'," Al-Areefi said. "We tried to find out why they had denied us entry but the officer explained that the reasons will be revealed to us in writing at the time of our deportation." Al-Areefi said he and his cousins were in a grip of fear and they suspected that someone could have sent them harmful video clips in order to frame them. "In the meantime, one of the officers took me to an isolated room and asked me to sign a paper. I refused to sign until I knew the content. I was told that the paper contained details of my personal belongings. Later, I was forced to sign another document that was meant to lock us up in a ‘dark room'. We had to remain in the lockup for seven more hours after the three-hour interrogation. In the room, there were three others — a Pakistani, a Jordanian and a Moroccan." Al-Areefi said the security guard in charge of the lockup turned down their request to inform their relatives or contact the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul. "It was very strange because some of the detainees were freely making phone calls with their relatives and having meals at their will. They even dared to offer us water. After sometime, the Moroccan gave me his phone to contact the Saudi Embassy but the reply from the mission was that they would call us back immediately. Even though we waited for more than three hours, no calls came. Then, one of the detainees sent a WhatsApp message to the embassy on our behalf. The embassy replied that they would call us in due course. We waited from 1 p.m. till 9 p.m., but to no avail," Al-Areefi said. Sultan and Khalid Al-Harthy, Al-Areefi's cousins, told him that they had called one embassy official and, to their utter dismay, he asked them who had given them his number. "After sometime, we got a promise from an embassy official that he would soon reach the airport to resolve our problem. When he failed to turn up, we called him again appealing to help us return to Saudi Arabia as our return tickets had been canceled. The embassy official apologized for his inability to come and help us as he was preoccupied with the issue of a Saudi family who got stuck at Ataturk Airport in Istanbul. Subsequently, we were forced to pay more than SR12,000 in cash to buy tickets for our return travel to the Kingdom on board a Turkish Airlines plane," Al-Areefi said. He said he could not believe it when one investigating officer told him that he was a suspect perhaps because it was his first trip to Turkey. "When I asked him to carry out an investigation on the basis of information contained in my passport, he ignored my plea apparently because his shift and that of others who detained us was over," he said. "When the officers in the next shift came, they treated us gently and gave us tea, bottles of water and food. They then led us to the plane that took us to the Kingdom after our 10-hour ordeal. Even though we expected to know the reasons for this harassment as promised, no explanation was made from the part of the Turkish authorities." Sultan Al-Harthy said they landed at Jeddah airport Friday morning and the Turkish authorities slapped a permanent travel ban on them. "We have lodged a complaint through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is awaiting a reply from our embassy," he added. The young Saudis said Adel Mirdad, Saudi ambassador to Turkey, sent them a message in which he assured them that the embassy had instructed its lawyer to prepare a memorandum asking the Turkish Ministry of Interior to investigate the incident. "We have received the ambassador's message 18 days after we had experienced neglect and improper treatment on the part of some embassy officials. He informed us that our matter is of top concern for him and that he had received the related documents in this regard," Al-Areefi said. On his part, Mirdad said he had informed the Ministry of Interior about what had happened to the six young men. "I have so far not received any outcome of the ongoing investigation from the Turkish side. The visuals from surveillance cameras at the airport could be helpful in the investigation process," Mirdad told Okaz/Saudi Gazette.
