The Supreme Court of Saudi Arabia orders a repeat trial for the fall of a crane in the Great Mosque of Mecca in 2015

MADRID, 25 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Supreme Court of Saudi Arabia has revoked the acquittal of those accused of the fall in 2015 of a crane in the Great Mosque of Mecca, an event that resulted in more than one hundred deaths and 235 injuries, and has ordered that the trial be repeated .

The Court of Appeals ruled in August 2021 in favor of the decision of a trial court to acquit in 2020 the thirteen defendants, including the Bin Laden Group, a company at the forefront of the Grand Mosque expansion project.

Previously, a court had ruled in October 2017 in favor of acquitting the defendants, all of them charged with negligence for the event, which left 108 dead and 238 injured, and pointed out that the fall of the crane was due to the rains and the strong winds.

The Bin Laden Group, which belongs to the family of the late Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden, argued during investigations that sudden changes in the wind caused the crane to fall on hundreds of pilgrims.

However, the Supreme Court has decided to overturn all previous rulings and has ordered that all cases be examined again in a new judicial circuit that excludes all judges who have already participated in the case, according to the newspaper 'Saudi Gazette'.

The court recalled that the Ministry of Finance filed a petition to remove the crane from the area and added that the defendants did not present evidence to support its continued presence in the area, before stressing that no evidence had been presented to support that the arm remained raised.

For this reason, the Supreme Court has argued that the incident points to a lack of precaution on the lives of the pilgrims before the event, which took place on September 11, 2015, in full 'Hajj', the main pilgrimage to Mecca.

"It has been determined during the consideration of the case that there was an insufficient investigation into the existence of a weather alert related to the incident in relation to the direction and speed of the wind," he explained, before pointing to the lack of competence of some workers and inspectors.