Body ID'd after a year in morgue

MADINAH, Saudi Arabia, June 19 (UPI) -- The mystery of a Saudi cab driver missing for more than a year has been solved with the identification of his body in a morgue where it had been all along.

The family of Eid Hamad Salim Al-Arawi, 55, said he simply disappeared one day, Arab News reported Tuesday. It turns out he had fallen ill and died suddenly at Madinah's King Fahd Hospital but officials there were unable to track down his relatives and his body had been lying in a refrigerator in a morgue until this week.

"The problem was due to the fact that an employee had misspelled the name of my uncle. Instead of 'Hamad,' he wrote 'Ahmad' and the body stayed in the morgue for a whole year," a nephew was quoted as saying by Al-Madinah newspaper.

He said the family had gone to police, who checked area hospitals without any luck finding Al-Arawi.

The nephew said the error not only caused the family distress and financial hardship but also three of Al-Arawi's daughters were unable to marry because he was their legal guardian and since he was listed as "missing" and not "dead" they couldn't acquire permission to marry.