Manama: A 14-year-old Saudi boy who forged a document to fly to Thailand has been reunited with his family.
Ahmad Hassan Basheeri, an eighth grade student in a middle school in Samtah in southwestern Saudi Arabia, repeatedly told classmates that he wanted to travel abroad and go away. The school management alerted his father about the plans he shared with classmates.
Ahmad who has a passport logged into a pre-travel account for minors and posing as the father, gave permission to himself to travel abroad alone.
He used the authorisation to book a ticket from Jizan to Jeddah, then onward to Kuwait, Doha and Bangkok.
One day before the scheduled flights, Ahmad opened an account on Twitter and posted that he was a victim of domestic abuse and that he faced death threats.
However, when Ahmad landed in Thailand, he was refused the entry visa since he was under-age and was sent back to Qatar, Saudi daily Al Madinah reported.
His father in the meantime discovered that his eldest son had gone missing and informed the authorities who tracked his travels.
When Qatar sent Ahmad back to Kuwait from where he had flown to the peninsular country, the father was at the airport to receive him.
Relatives said they were shocked how a young teenager could secure the authorisation and travel alone from soutwestern Saudi Arabia to Thailand, making stops in Jeddah, Kuwait and Doha.
Ahmad’s planning and posting of death threats and domestic abuse on Twitter were very similar to the much-publicised “escape” last year by Saudi teenager Rahaf Mohammad Al Qunun who fled from Kuwait to Thailand on her way to Australia before ending up as a refugee in Canada.
