Saudi Gazette report AMMAN — Syrian government forces have killed a Saudi citizen at a military checkpoint at Al-Nabak town in Rif Dimashq province, near the capital city, early last month, according to a local daily. The Syrian guards fired six bullets at Farhan Atta Allah Al-Anzi when they found that he was a Saudi. Al-Anzi was on his way to Jordan to complete procedures for exiting his family from war-torn Syria where he had lived for nine years. Al-Anzi, who was an ambulance driver at King Faisal Specialist Hospital, left the Kingdom in 2004 for Syria fleeing imprisonment for accumulated debts in excess of SR300,000. The debts were compounded by his losses in the stock market crash. Accompanied by one of his two wives, four daughters and his son Mohammed, Al-Anzi settled down in the city of Homs not far from his little farm in a nearby village. His eldest son Faisal, a university student who was left behind in the Kingdom, said contacts with his father were cut off after the Saudi Embassy in Damascus was shut. He said he sought the help of the Saudi Embassy in Lebanon but was not able to locate his father. Mohammed, who was living with his father in Syria, said when fighting escalated between the government forces and the opposition, life became intolerable so his father decided to return home. Mohammed said early last month his father decided to travel to Jordan to complete the papers that would enable his family to travel to Saudi Arabia. At a military checkpoint set up by the Syrian army in Al-Nabak village, his father was stopped and asked for his identity papers. "When the army came to know that my father was Saudi, they fired six bullets from a machine gun which immediately killed him just because of his Saudi identity," he said. Mohammed said the army left my father's dead body at the spot after robbing him of his money and identity papers. He said some of the villagers who knew his father took the body and buried it in the village. "The villagers also took us to a village called Ridaifat, which is 150 km away from Al-Nabak where we stayed with some friends there," he said. Mohammed said on the same day he called his brother Faisal in Riyadh and told him about the death of their father. Faisal immediately called the official in charge of the affairs of Saudi citizens at the Saudi Embassy in Beirut, and sent a message to the ambassador with a copy of the family book but there was no response. He told the story of his family to a Syrian friend in Riyadh who promised to help him through an officer in the Free Army for payment of some money or the family car, a 2007 model. "I readily accepted the offer and next day the friend told me that the Free Army has agreed to take my stranded family to the Jordanian borders provided that they first received the car," he said. He said the friend gave him the mobile number of one of the members of the Free Army named Abu Firas. "I immediately passed over the telephone number to my brother in Syria and asked him to contact Abu Firas," Faisal added. Mohammed said at about 7 a.m. one day, Abu Firas came to them with two other individuals and drove the family in two cars to a place in Damascus and then to the city of Daraa, close to the Jordanian borders. "We gave him the keys and the registration papers of our car and in exchange he gave us forged Syrian identities," he said. He said that in Daraa the elements of the Free Army took their mobile phones so as not to be traced by the government forces and asked them to wait until dark to be able to take them to the Jordanian borders. "At 9 p.m. the same day we arrived in Jordan with 200 other families," he added. He said his brother Faisal, who came from the Kingdom, rented a house for them in the Al-Zarqa province. Faisal went to the Saudi Charge d'Affaires Dr. Hamad Al-Hajri who gave him a letter to all hospitals in Amman to treat all members of his family at the expense of the embassy. He also gave orders that the family be provided with a furnished apartment and each member be paid a weekly allowance. He said that at the hospital it was discovered that one of his sisters had a shell embedded in her shoulder while another one was found to have kidney problems and was admitted to hospital where she was still being treated. Faisal said four of his half brothers and sisters who were born in Syria have no identity papers. He urged the Saudi Embassy in Jordan to give him a death certificate for his father and asked the Ministry of Social Affairs to provide them with accommodation and include them among the beneficiaries of social security. He also asked those who want to help to settle the debts of his father.
