While the residents of Sidon were still recovering from the grief of the death of Mohammad Najm on the coast of Amchit after his disappearance for 17 days following his fishing trip to the Sidon beach, social media was abuzz with two alarming events. The first was the death of two young girls due to unknown poisoning, pending lab results, and the second was the disappearance of a high school student after he invested people's money in "digital currencies."
The tragic event that saddened the people of Sidon affected the Saleh family, consisting of four members: Sheikh Walid Abdul-Razeq Saleh, the imam of the "Al-Mustafa" mosque near Sidon’s market; his wife Safaa Al-Attar; and their two daughters, Rayan and Razan. They live in a house belonging to the mosque and experienced symptoms of diarrhea and vomiting. Their health deteriorated rapidly, and they were taken to the government hospital, where Rayan passed away first, followed by her sister Razan hours later after being transferred to Hamoud University Hospital due to her critical condition. The mother, Al-Attar, was admitted to the intensive care unit in serious condition, while Sheikh Walid received treatment and left the hospital.
Doctors overseeing the family’s treatment believed they were poisoned, although they confirmed that the family had only eaten food prepared at home: fava beans, eggs, and homemade potatoes. The security forces initiated an investigation based on the directive of the public prosecutor in the south, Judge Rahif Ramadan, to identify the source of the poisoning after taking samples from family members and conducting a forensic examination of the home and surrounding area. The burial of Rayan, originally scheduled for yesterday, was postponed to a later date pending the release of results.
As for the crypto trading incident involving Mustafa, a first-year baccalaureate student at the Evangelical Arts School, his story ended with his disappearance. He began trading within the school by enticing his classmates to invest small amounts in this “gambling” before expanding outside the school, attracting some residents of Sidon, eventually managing to accumulate a significant amount in U.S. dollars, with profits ranging from 2% to 4% weekly. It is reported that some people earned $500 for every $10,000 invested.
Mustafa’s classmates told "Nidaa Al-Watan" that he would often arrive at school in a new car and had opened an office along the eastern highway to provide his clients with their profits, having communicated with them via the "Podcast" app and "WhatsApp" to determine their share and the amounts owed to each. He then decided to stop adding new clients once his reputation spread, becoming a destination for many seeking to invest their money, including brokers and intermediaries for depositors who didn’t know him and took commissions for opening accounts for them, until the total amount managed exceeded one million dollars, before he faced a setback and vanished.
In a voice message published on "WhatsApp," Mustafa confirmed that “those who invested with him did so on the basis of profit and loss, and about 85% of them have retrieved their money, with profits multiplying two, three, or ten times, and all of Sidon can attest to that,” adding, “I won’t run away with the people’s rights; I intend to start work, but it needs a little time. Everyone will get what they are owed, but I am astonished by the rumors of stolen amounts of $1 million, $2 million, or $5 million. In truth, the total amount I lost does not exceed $450,000.”
One currency exchanger in Sidon told "Nidaa Al-Watan" that the student doesn’t work as an exchanger, and the reason for falling into such schemes is the greed of certain people seeking quick and large profits, in addition to the banking crisis which led to a lack of trust in banks, pushing people to keep their money at home, making its usage easier. He indicated that “the outcome of this situation, concerning a student and a minor, is a natural one.”
In summary, Mustafa has disappeared while his echoes remain present throughout the city until further notice.
