Saudi King Suspends Bin Laden’s Family Construction Firm fter Mecca Crane Disaster
The Saudi Binladin Group (SBG), run by Osama bin Laden’s brother, has been
banned from taking on new work, and will have its current projects reviewed,
at the behest of Saudi King Salman, following the deadly Mecca crane collapse
last week which killed 107 people.
According to official state mouthpiece, the Saudi Press Agency, which
cited government investigators, SBG was
“partly responsible for the accident” and
“had not respected the rules of safety.”
The crane, allegedly toppled by high winds, collapsed on top of worshipers who
had been gathering outside the Grand Mosque, next to the Kaaba, Islam’s
holiest site in Mecca, causing 107 deaths and almost 400 injuries.
“The position of the crane was in violation of operating instructions
prepared by the manufacturer,”
said the investigators, who are expected to deliver a full report by Friday.
Members of the SBG board of directors, including chairman Bakr Bin Laden, have
been told to stay inside the country, until a verdict is pronounced on the
accident.
SBG had been the preferred contractor of the Saudi regime for large-scale
infrastructure and prestige projects, and had been in charge of the $27
billion expansion of the Grand Mosque for four years. At the end of the
project, the building was to grow by 400,000 square meters – big enough to
house 2.2 million people at once.
An anonymous senior SBG engineer told AFP that the accident had been
“an act of God,” and that the structure had operated without a hitch
for almost the entire length of the reconstruction.
“It has been installed in a way so as not to affect the hundreds of
thousands of worshipers in the area and in an extremely professional
way,”
he said of the crane.
“This is the most difficult place to work in, due to the huge numbers of
people in the area.”
King Salman has announced that the families of all fatally wounded victims, as
well as those who received permanent disabilities will be compensated with 1
million riyals ($267,000) and those with treatable injuries will be given half
of that sum.
Despite the incident, the Hajj, the annual holy pilgrimage to Mecca, will
proceed as normal, and is expected to attract two million people.
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