The bodies of the victims were discovered by farmer Ali Habib earlier this month while he was clearing the farmland he had rented since 2012 in Safwa area of Qatif in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, but the crime had occurred in 2010, The [Persian] Gulf News reported on Friday.
Police arrested 25 people, including expatriates and Saudi citizens, in connection with the case, the Arab News reported on Thursday.
Three of the suspects confessed to their crime in court on Wednesday, the report added.
A man, whose identity was not disclosed in the report, said that four years ago, he was driving around with a friend after consuming drugs and alcohol when he received a call from another friend at around 10pm who asked to see him immediately at a farm.
“We saw five workers with their hands tied in the seating area. When the friend with me asked why they were tied, our host said that one of them had harassed his sponsor’s daughter and other women,” he was quoted as telling the court.
“I saw that the five Indian workers were tied and unconscious, just before we went to another room to drink alcohol and smoke hashish. While we were drinking, I heard one of them screaming so I went out and slapped him in the face,” the man said.
“Later the friend who came with me left the room with a stick and hit the worker until he bled. We then took them all into another room,” he added.
“The three of us continued beating the workers on different parts of their bodies while continuing to drink and smoke,” the man recalled.
According to him, the host suggested that “we bury them alive in a hole behind the entrance gate of the farm”. “We tied them again with ropes and adhesive tape so they could not move,” he added.
He said that then their host loaded the workers onto a pickup truck and dumped them into a 2.5-meter-deep hole.
“We buried them alive with all their identity cards. At the time for the dawn prayer my friend and I left the farm, while our host remained there alone.”
The identities of the victims, however, has not yet been revealed.
The decomposed bodies were found with ropes around their arms and legs and their mouths filled with cotton.
NTJ/MB