AJMAN // Little Halla El Hassan Bakar is celebrating her second birthday without her brothers, Suhail and Ali, more than a year after the triplets were poisoned in a pesticide accident in Ajman.
Halla inhaled some of the dangerous chemicals that killed her brothers that day in March last year and spent two days recovering in hospital. Halla and her parents, El Hassan Bakar and his wife Jameela Ihsan, have since moved to Abu Dhabi.
Yesterday, she celebrated her birthday in a restaurant in the capital, apparently unaffected by the tragic events.
"Halla is growing up so fast," said her father. "She is very smart and likes to play with pens and pencils. Sometimes she paints something and calls me to see. I wish she could grow up to be an architect."
Mr Bakar said although Halla was too young to have any concrete memories of her brothers, he could see her react when he showed her their photographs.
"If you leave her with an album, you will find she has opened a page with pictures of her brothers, looking in contemplation like an adult person," he said. "But what we are trying to do is to help her not feel like she lost her two brothers, not to make her sad."
The company responsible for spraying the pesticide in the house next to the Bakars' home, Al Fawaz Pest Control, has been shut down.
Ajman Court of First Instance found the company's manager and two assistants guilty of killing Suhail and Ali. Judge Hamadi Al Shaali handed down four-year sentences and ordered them to pay blood money of Dh400,000. The verdict was later appealed and reduced to six months in prison.
A spokesman for the Ajman courts said the men were still in prison because they had not yet paid the blood money.
Tariq Al Rashid, the director of Ajman Public Prosecution, said in an investigative report that the deaths were caused by the using concentrated pesticides instead of at the recommended strength.
"The fumigant used by the workers was among those prohibited as it contained aluminium and zinc phosphides," Mr Al Rashid's reportsaid.
Izziddin Khader, the managing partner at Technical Agriculture Establishment in Al Ain, said untrained people should avoid handling chemicals as they can be dangerous even if there are no immediate effects.
"Most of these pesticides are accumulated in the liver and other internal parts of the body," Mr Khader said. "After some time - it could be days, it could be years - they will start creating problems and no one realises where this comes from."
In November 2009, the Ministry of Environment and Water banned 167 chemicals because they were deemed to be too dangerous for people and the environment, and had harmful long-term effects. Another 32 substances can only be used under the supervision of qualified people.
But the regulations are not often enforced, leaving people and the environment at risk, industry experts have said.
They say violations such as selling substances banned in the UAE or selling highly specialised chemicals to unqualified people are common.
Mr Bakar said he had spent long hours considering how he would tell Halla about Suhail and Ali when she was old enough.
Keeping it a secret would hurt her when she finally learnt the truth, he said, but he was unsure of the appropriate age to explain it to her.
Ms Ihsan said the tragedy would never leave her, but she was thankful to see Halla every day.
"I don't even know what to say but I am really happy to see Halla growing up," Ms Ihsan said.
Mr Bakar said the death of his sons completely changed his life, making even everyday work difficult.
"The more I try to forget it and move on, the more I remember it," he said. "It is something I would not like any other family to go through."
He said he wanted authorities to ensure the calamity that befell his family did not happen to thers.
"I have myself met several officials from the Ministry of Environment and urged them to do their best not to allow harmful pesticide entering into the country," Mr Bakar said.
"Many have assured me it won't happen again and promised they were still investigating how exactly those pesticides that killed my two sons entered the UAE."
ykakande@thenational.ae
* With additional reporting by Vesela Todorova
The Case For Trump
By Victor Davis Hanson
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
MANDOOB
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
The Bio
Ram Buxani earned a salary of 125 rupees per month in 1959
Indian currency was then legal tender in the Trucial States.
He received the wages plus food, accommodation, a haircut and cinema ticket twice a month and actuals for shaving and laundry expenses
Buxani followed in his father’s footsteps when he applied for a job overseas
His father Jivat Ram worked in general merchandize store in Gibraltar and the Canary Islands in the early 1930s
Buxani grew the UAE business over several sectors from retail to financial services but is attached to the original textile business
He talks in detail about natural fibres, the texture of cloth, mirrorwork and embroidery
Buxani lives by a simple philosophy – do good to all
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
