5 'Indians' tortured, buried alive in Saudi Arabia: report

In a shocking case, three men in Saudi Arabia have confessed in court that they tortured and buried alive five Asian workers, believed to be Indians, on a farm four years ago.
The three men confessed in Qatif General Court on Wednesday to torturing five Asian workers for hours and then burying them alive, Arab News reported.
The decomposing bodies of the Asians were found on the farm in Safwa, Qatif, an urban area located in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, earlier this month. They were killed in 2010.
The Eastern Province police have arrested 25 people in connection with the killings, a source was quoted as saying by the daily.

The suspects include expatriates and citizens. They are being held at Safwa police station, the report said.
One man, describing events four years ago, was quoted as saying that he was driving around with a friend consuming drugs and alcohol when he received a call from another friend at around 10 pm who asked to see him immediately at the farm.

"We had alcohol with us when we arrived at the farm. We saw five workers with their hands tied in the seating area. When the friend with me asked why they were tied, our host said that one of them had sexually harassed his sponsor's daughter and other women," the man told the court.

"I saw that the five Indian workers were tied and unconscious, just before we went to another room to drink alcohol and smoke hashish. While we were drinking, I heard one of them screaming so I went out and slapped him in the face," he said.
The man confessed that the three of them continued to beat the workers while drinking and smoking.
"We kept drinking, smoking and beating them. Our host suggested we bury them alive in a hole behind the entrance gate of the farm. We tied them again with ropes and adhesive tape so they could not move," he said.

The man said their host brought his pickup truck and the three loaded the workers on to it. They then dumped them into a 2.5-metre-deep hole.
"We buried them alive with all their identity cards. At the time for the dawn prayer my friend and I left the farm, while our host remained there alone."
The grisly discovery of the human remains happened by chance when a man named Ali Habib, who had rented the land from its elderly woman owner, was clearing it to start farming.
The decomposed bodies were found with ropes around their arms and legs and their mouths filled with cotton and covered with duct tape.

Police found an engraved gold ring and residence cards that helped them to identify some of the victims and suspects.
When Habib was digging the area he found the carcasses. Initially, he thought the remains were those of a dead animal, but his doubts disappeared after he discovered undergarments next to a body.