Woman buried after death in Saudi Arabia

By Philip Mwakio
The body of a woman who died in Saudi Arabia last December, weeks after she jetted into the gulf state, has been brought back home.

Esha Abdulrahman Swabu’s remains were interred on Sunday in Mombasa.
The cause of her death has been surrounded with controversy.

Saudi authorities insist she died from natural causes and have provided a preliminary forensic report from there stating that doctors found “no aspects of occurrence of criminal violence or resistance” on her body.
However, relatives who spoke to The Standard maintain that they suspected foul play in the death.

According to the deceased’s husband Seif Jackson Obare, there was an attempt to bury her in Saudi Arabia. He claims the intention was to conceal cause of death.
plot

Obare claims some of the deceased’s relatives in the Gulf were behind the plot to bury her there with an argument that it would be cost effective.
It has taken more than four months to return her body to Kenya due to a combination of Saudi bureaucracy on the movement of corpses abroad and lack of financial means to transport the body.
Obare said a good Samaritan helped the family airlift the body.

Esha, in her 40s, has four grown up children. The family claimed she had called several times and spoken to one of her daughters complaining about the working conditions.
But in a rejoinder, a director of the firm that recruited Esha to take up the Saudi Arabia job denied any wrong doing on their part.
“The information about Esha’s demise was communicated to us sometime towards the end of December and we did our level best to liaise with her next of kin,” said Mr Mohamed Mzee of Bin Mzee Agency.
He said soon after getting the sad news, he demanded a copy of the doctor’s report, which was sent and certified by an advocate of the High Court and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
autopsy

He, however, said he had personally not seen a copy of the autopsy but was told by Esha’s employer in Saudi that the cause of her death had been certified as natural.

In the meantime, Muslim for Human Rights (Muhuri)said they would continue piling pressure on the Government to see to it that deaths and injuries to Kenyan immigrant workers in the Gulf state are addressed conclusively.

Muhuri’s Project Officer in-charge of Rapid Response, Mr Francis Auma, said the Government was not serious about addressing the plight of its immigrant workforce suffering slavery in the Arab world.