DHAMD: The Saudi Embassy in Yemen has begun investigating how a 13-year-old Saudi boy from Jizan was seemingly deported to Yemen by mistake and left in an orphans' home in the capital Sana'a for over eight months Ahmad Al-Hamdan, the Saudi Ambassador to Yemen, said that officials were seeking to establish the veracity of the report and to take the boy's father to Sana'a to collect his son. The family of the child says he may have been deported to Yemen by mistake along with a group of illegal immigrants, and that he was found by chance by relatives. According to his grandparents, Khaled Shira'i was last seen playing near his house as he did every day over eight months ago, but failed to return. Friends and relatives scoured the village to no avail, and the search remained fruitless at hospitals and police stations. Then, his grandparents said, the family suddenly received news that he was in a Sana'a orphanage. “Some relatives who often travel to Yemen returned one day and said they found Khaled there,” the boy's grandmother said. “They tried to get the officials to allow him to come home with them, but they said that the boy's parents had to go personally, but they don't have passports or the money to do that at the moment.” She said that although it had not been confirmed, it is believed that Khaled was deported along with a group of Yemenis living in the Kingdom illegally. “When they found out in Yemen that he was a Saudi they put him in the orphanage,” she said. She urged the Saudi embassy to act as quickly as possible and also demanded that the persons responsible be punished. Jizan officials from the Police and the Border Guard said that all deportation procedures are carried out by the Passports Department.
