Manama: A Saudi security man was arrested on the King Fahad Causeway as he attempted to cross into Bahrain illegally.
The man was held on the Bahraini side of the 25km terrestrial link between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia after a police officer had doubts about his data record, Saudi news site Sabq reported on Wednesday.
The suspect admitted during his questioning that he was able to drive past the Saudi police after he coordinated his passage with a passports officer working on the causeway and gave him SR5,000.
The Bahraini police referred the suspect to their Saudi counterpart and a legal action was launched against him and the officer who accepted the bribe to let him through the police checkpoint.
King Fahad Causeway, opened in November 1986, is one of the busiest road sectors in the Arab world and has been used by millions of people moving between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and beyond.
Customs officers on both sides of the causeway have been engaged in a relentless battle against incredible ruses to smuggle weapons, explosives, alcohol, birds and animals, a task that has been rendered particularly challenging by the high number of daily users and commuters.
Last month, the Saudi authorities foiled an attempt to smuggle a foreign woman into the country by hiding her inside a car.
The woman was reportedly “concealed” under a pile of clothes behind the front seats of the car crossing the causeway.
“A car arrived early in the morning to the customs area for clearance,” Dhaifallah Al Otaibi, the general director of customs at King Fahad Causeway, said. “During the routine inspection, a foreign woman was discovered on the mats and under a pile of clothes behind the driver’s seat. The ruse obviously did not work and the customs officer reported the case. The procedures in such cases are being followed,” he said.
The nationality of the woman and the reasons for the smuggling were not announced by the authorities.
In June 2013, an attempt to smuggle a European woman into Saudi Arabia was foiled by local customs officers.
The woman whose nationality was not revealed did not have a passport and was hiding under a large carpet and a small wooden table on the Pajero floor mats.
The woman was discovered as the customs inspected the car driven from Bahrain by a British national.
In March, Bahraini authorities said that they seized bomb-making material on a bus coming from Iraq via Saudi Arabia with 55 passengers on-board, mostly women and children.
“A screening of the passengers’ luggage with X-ray machines showed that one of the bags contained suspicious things,” Advocate General and Terror Crimes Chief Prosecutor Ahmad Al Hammadi said. “During a closer inspection, 140 electric detonators, 41 electric circuits that could be used in blasts, a remote control and some mobile phones were found hidden inside some electrical appliances in the bag.”
In May, Saudi Arabia foiled an attempt to smuggle RDX – a highly explosive material - and detonators intended to be used in the kingdom.
The Saudi security men had doubts about the two men driving into Saudi Arabia and decided to search their car.
The inspection yielded 14 bags carefully hidden inside the back seats of the car. Officials said that 11 bags contained more than 30 kilos of the RDX and two bags had 50 blasting caps. The last bag had a six-metre detonator cord.
