The deaths of more than a thousand pilgrims in Saudi Arabia for the hajj have exposed an underworld of illicit tour operators, smugglers and scammers who take advantage of Muslims desperate to fulfill their religious duty of traveling to Mecca.
While registered pilgrims are transported around shrines in air-conditioned buses and rest in air-conditioned tents, undocumented immigrants are often exposed to the elements, making them more vulnerable to extreme heat. This year, some pilgrims described seeing people fainting and passing bodies in the street as temperatures reached 120 degrees or more.
In an interview on state television on Sunday, Saudi Health Minister Fahd al-Jalajel said 83 percent of the more than 1,300 deaths occurred among pilgrims who did not have official permits.
“Rising temperatures during the hajj season posed a big challenge this year,” he said. “Unfortunately – and this is painful for all of us – those who did not have permits for the hajj traveled long distances under the sun.”
Mr. al-Jalajel’s remarks come after days of silence from Saudi authorities over deaths during the hajj, an arduous and deeply spiritual ritual that capable Muslims are encouraged to perform during their lives.
With nearly two million pilgrims participating each year, many of whom are elderly or ill, it is not uncommon for people to die from heat stress, illness or chronic disease, and Saudi Arabia does not regularly publish these statistics . It is therefore unclear whether the number of deaths this year was unusual. Last year, 774 pilgrims died from Indonesia onlyand in 1985, more than 1,700 people died around the holy sites, most from heat stress, a study at the found time.
But as a large number of pilgrims who died this year were making the pilgrimage without official documents, their deaths have exposed the underworld of unlicensed tour operators, smugglers and scammers who take advantage of pilgrims desperate to perform the hajj, helping them escape to regulations.
“There is so much greed around this business,” said Iman Ahmed, co-owner of El-Iman Tours in Cairo.
Ms Ahmed said she refused to send unregistered pilgrims on hajj packages, but other Egyptian tour operators and Saudi brokers made a lot of money doing so.
More than 1.8 million pilgrims have officially registered for the hajj this year. But around 400,000 others attempted to make the trip without the required documents, according to a senior Saudi official. said the Agence France-Presse news agency, speaking on condition of anonymity. That would mean nearly one in five pilgrims this year have bypassed the kingdom’s restrictions, including a security cordon around Mecca that closes the gates weeks before the hajj.
Several countries that have recorded large numbers of pilgrim deaths have moved quickly to deal with the consequences in recent days.
In Egypt, authorities announced they would revoke the licenses of 16 companies that issued “unofficial” visas to hopeful pilgrims without providing them with adequate services.
In Tunisia, which has more than 50 people dead, the president fired the country’s minister of religious affairs on Friday.
And in Jordan, which recorded the deaths of at least 99 pilgrims, the prosecutor opened an investigation into illegal hajj routes and the people who profited from them.
In interviews with The New York Times, Hajj tour operators, pilgrims and relatives of the dead said the number of undocumented pilgrims appeared to have been increased by growing economic desperation in countries like Egypt and Jordan. An official Hajj package can cost more than $5,000 or $10,000, depending on the pilgrim’s country of origin – far beyond the means of many people hoping to make the trip.
But they also described easily exploited loopholes in Saudi regulations that allow undocumented pilgrims to travel to the kingdom on a tourist or visitor visa several weeks before the hajj. Once they arrive, they discover a network of illegal brokers and smugglers who offer their services, take their money and sometimes abandon them to their fate, they explain.
Saudi officials did not respond to a request for comment.
Among those who fell into this trap was Safaa al-Tawab, from the Egyptian city of Luxor.
Ms. al-Tawab, 55, failed to obtain a permit for the hajj, but found an Egyptian travel agency that offered to take her for about $3,000, said her brother, Ahmed al -Tawab.
He said she did not realize she was breaking the rules during her trip to Saudi Arabia last month.
After her arrival, she told her relatives that she had been placed in inadequate accommodation and prevented from leaving by the tour operator. While the company had promised to provide air-conditioned buses to transport pilgrims around Mecca, it found itself walking miles in the sun to reach the holy sites, Mr. al-Tawab said.
His sister died in the middle of the pilgrimage, but when he contacted the travel agency, they assured him that she was fine. When the company representative learned that his relatives knew of his death, he turned off his phone, Mr. al-Tawab said.
“The pilgrims were deceived,” said Mahmoud Qassem, a member of the Egyptian Parliament, in a request for information to government officials.
“They left them alone to face their own destiny,” Mr. Qassem said of the tour operators.
The report was written by Hager ElHakeem, Rana F. Sweis, Zia ur-Rehman, Saif Hasnat, Mujib Mashal, Safak Timur, Aida Alami And Muktita Suhartono.
