JEDDAH: The Governor of Jeddah Prince Mish'al Bin Majed Bin Abdul Aziz has contacted the mayor to order a halt to the removal of property from a farm of disputed ownership in Brayman, east Jeddah. The ownership issue is currently being examined by the courts and Prince Mish'al has ordered no further action from the municipality at the site until the case is resolved. Brayman Municipality had begun uprooting hundreds of palm trees and demolishing buildings at the farm, reportedly ignoring earlier orders from the governorate to take no action until the courts had designated the land's ownership. The property is contested by a Saudi who claims it as compensation for another plot, while his opponents say they lawfully inherited it. The General Court in Jeddah has as yet been unable to decide who the rightful owner is of the approximately 300 square meters of land. One of the claimants to inheritance, Muqbil Al-Sa'edi, said he had left the case with the court when he suddenly received a warning from the municipality that heavy vehicles were to move in. “They sent us a warning out of nowhere last week,” Al-Sa'edi said. “We informed the municipality, providing them with official documents, that the case was still being looked at by the court and that the governor had ordered any action to be delayed until the court gave its ruling. “We presented the documents to the municipality chairman, but he went ahead anyway and sent in the machinery.” Al-Sa'edi added that the chairman then appeared at the site the day after demolishing began with cleaning equipment to remove the uprooted trees and building rubble. “We intend to take the mayoralty to court, particularly the municipality of Brayman,” Al-Sa'edi said. Jeddah Police, whose presence at the demolishing work had been requested by the authorities, said in an official letter to the Land Monitoring and Encroachments Committee on Wednesday that they had acted in accordance with “misleading information” from the chairman of Brayman Municipality. “The chairman went over and above the law and specific instructions and has put the police in an awkward position,” municipality police chief Abdul Aziz Al-Za'aqi said in the letter. “I am concerned about possible police involvement in future transgressions.” Al-Za'aqi added that a businessman had presented complaints in which he demanded that demolishing and appropriation of the property be completed. “The police have abided by the orders of the Governor of Jeddah and we have passed all complaints on to the General Court,” he said. Governor Prince Mish'al halted the works and ordered the mayor and the police to forward all complaints to the court after he was informed by Al-Sa'edi of the municipality's action in which some 400 palms were uprooted, a house knocked down and a well filled in.
