Okaz/Saudi Gazette

RIYADH — The family of Saudi trainee pilot Abdullah Al-Shareef, who went missing in the Philippines since May 17 last year, suspected mischief while expressing that all indications are pointing to the abduction of Abdullah, most probably by his Filipino trainer. Speaking to Okaz/Saudi Gazette, they rejected the theory floated of their being a chance for a plane crash during the training flight, which he supposedly boarded.

Abdullah’s mother said that her son did not board the plane, as she asked a series of questions pertaining to the mysterious disappearance of her son. “Why did Abdullah’s plane disappear while four other planes that were flying along with it did not disappear in the same place and moment?” Who responded to a call from Abdullah’s mobile phone two weeks after his disappearance? Who played with his phone, which was switched off the day before he went missing, although Abdullah had sent her a video clip the same day?

She said the family members carried out a wide search at sea and land and analyzed the information that they obtained through their own efforts. “If you speak about the case in a specific way, I say perhaps my son had not boarded the plane in the first place and he might have been kidnapped from the flight training school itself. My interpretation of this is that my son’s name was not there in the list of those who boarded the plane,” she said.

Abdullah went missing from Occidental Mindoro Island during a training flight with his Filipino trainer Jose Nelson Yapparco. Abdullah and his brother Abdul Majeed, who were studying aviation in the Philippines at their own expense, went to the island for training.

Saudi Arabia’s Embassy in the Philippines said in a statement last Wednesday that a high-level Saudi security delegation had arrived in Manila to coordinate with the local authorities in order to launch massive searches and investigations to locate Abdullah.

This was in line with the directives of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman to coordinate with the concerned Filipino authorities to expedite the ongoing procedures and investigations into the missing case. The move reignited hope for Abdullah’s family members in unraveling the mystery about his fate, as they believe that he is still alive.

The family suspects some foul play on the part of the Filipino trainer pertaining to Abdullah’s mysterious missing. According to their version, another trainee pilot was scheduled to fly on that day, but the 23-year-old Abdullah was chosen in his place for unknown reasons. The flight took off with his trainer Jose in a twin-engine plane and flew over the Philippines capital Manila for about 20 minutes, and then contact with the control tower was lost and the plane disappeared from the permanent radar at 8:45 in the morning.

The family says that Abdullah was a professional pilot who was good at performing some spectacular maneuvers in the sky and that he was accorded praise from his trainers for his superb skills and excellence. They also noted that there is no evidence of a plane crash.

Where is the plane wreckage?

The family of Abdullah was surprised that the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines issued a statement about the search operations in which it indicated that it had access to the wreckage of Abdullah’s plane. “When we asked to see the wreckage, the authority pulled back from its statement and issued another statement in which it denied its earlier statement, saying that the statement was about the wreck of another plane, and that a mistake had occurred in the matter,” it said.

The family indicated that they conducted searches on their own in the Philippines and that when they examined the flight school documents they were surprised to see that the name of their missing son was neither listed in the official papers nor in the flight schedule. They also found that the trainer Jose did not write any data on the flight form about the plane such as its type and model as well as the name and details of the trainee “as if the trainer was planning to go missing and avoiding Abdullah’s presence in the flight.”

Did Abdullah board the plane or was kidnapped before his flight?, they asked, and pointed out that all those who work at the school confirmed that the trainer insisted on filling the plane’s fuel tank completely, and not half as it was the usual practice. “This shows that the trainer was not intending to come back with the plane after the trip that takes half an hour,” the family said while expressing doubts about the behavior of the trainer’s wife.

A fisherman found a bag containing the trainer’s identity card, bankcards, and photos, and this was the only confirmed information after both of them went missing.

Regarding the bankcards that the fisherman found in the sea along with the trainer’s bag and identification papers, the family said that they documented the fishermen’s statements about the safety of the cards and that they were not damaged. However, the police produced in front of them a different bag with damaged cards as if someone had destroyed it to hide some evidence, in addition to the fact that the bag that the fishermen found was not the same bag that was in the possession of the trainer, who took it with him on the trip, according to the claims of the family.

The family continues to question the validity of claims pointing to Abdullah’s disappearance, saying that the Filipino trainer’s wife did not show any grief over her husband’s purported disappearance. “She kept publishing some posts on Facebook in English and not in her Filipino language, appealing to search for her husband. The surveillance cameras revealed that she met the fishermen, who found the bag, in a restaurant and the wife greeted them as if she knew him and had made a deal with him because of his testimony — making it look as if she knew the matter previously or knew about it later.