Saudi Gazette report

DAMMAM — An appeals court in the Eastern Province on Monday upheld the verdict issued by a criminal court in Dammam in September 2020, awarding the death penalty to a woman, known in the media as “Dammam kidnapper,” and jail terms for three other defendants.

The woman, the main defendant, was convicted of kidnapping newborns from Dammam three decades ago. The court also sentenced the second defendant to one and a half years in prison and SR20,000 in fine while the third defendant, a Yemeni man, was awarded 25 and a half years of jail in the case. The court also handed one-year imprisonment and imposed a fine amounting to SR5,000 on the fourth defendant.

The criminal court found the Saudi woman who had kidnapped two boys from a hospital in Dammam in the 1990s guilty. She raised the abducted children as her own and reportedly told them they were born out of wedlock. Police investigations into the babies’ disappearance failed to yield results until suspicions about the identity of the two boys, who are now in their twenties, rose after she tried to apply for their identification cards.

The mystery of the missing of the two babies was unraveled two years ago when the woman submitted applications to obtain identification documents for the two men. Subsequently, the authorities conducted the required medical and technical examinations, and the results proved no biological relationship between her and them and their lineage to other Saudi families who had previously reported the abduction of their children.

The Public Prosecution spokesman said that their investigation team carried out 247 procedures in the case, and these included 21 investigation sessions with 21 defendants and witnesses, and filed charges against defendants including four convicts while the fifth defendant is absconding after escaping to outside the Kingdom. The Public Prosecution sought the help of Interpol to bring back the culprit.