Saudi: Infamous “Dammam kidnapper” sentenced to death
Saudi Arabia’s Criminal Court sentenced the infamous Dammam Kidnapper – a Saudi woman in her 50’s named Mariam, to death.
The investigation – which included 247 procedures and 41 interrogation sessions with 21 suspects and witnesses – resulted in the indictment of five defendants in the case, four Saudi nationals and a Yemeni.
The court also sentenced her Yemeni and Saudi partners, each 25 years in prison for helping her to kidnap the infants.
The woman had kidnapped three boys from a hospital in Dammam in the 1990s, raised them 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 two boys, who are now in their twenties, rose after she tried to apply for identification cards for them.
When she submitted applications to obtain identification documents for the two men and when the authorities conducted the required medical and technical examinations, 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.
