One year after his disappearance, the trail remains cold in the search for University of Saskatchewan student Hamza Alsharief.

He has not been seen or heard from since last December.

Alsharief was a third-year chemical engineering student who had received a scholarship from a Saudi Arabian chemical company to study in Canada.

After his sudden disappearance, the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia hired Ottawa-based lawyer Gar Knutson, who has experience working on missing persons cases, to oversee the search efforts.

Knutson says Alsharief seemed to be doing well and did not appear to be under excessive academic stress, which might have led him to take his own life. But he was in a strange new country and likely still trying to adapt.

“Saskatoon is not Saudi Arabia,” Knutson said. “These kids, there are thousands of them in Canada and they’re in a different culture, a different world.”

Alsharief was last heard from on Dec. 14, 2011 when he spoke with his sister Laila over the phone about the possibility of them seeing each other during the Christmas break.

Laila told News Talk 650 in July that Alsharief had finished writing his exams for the semester but was still a bit concerned about school, which she thought was normal because he found the chemical engineering program at the U of S to be challenging.

The siblings left their family in Saudi Arabia to come to Canada for post-secondary education. Laila was working on her PhD in mathematics at the University of Waterloo when Alsharief disappeared. She has since returned to Saudi Arabia.

“We just need to find him, alive or dead,” Laila said. “We don’t care if he’s in the river or wherever he is, we just need to find him.”

The last time Alsharief was seen was also Dec. 14, when he left his downtown apartment. When police searched his apartment, they discovered his passport, his wallet and one of his two cell phones.

The most common theory in Alsharief’s disappearance is that he fell into the frigid South Saskatchewan River while out on one of his many walks along the riverbank, Knutson said.

In January, members of Alsharief’s family and Saudi Arabian embassy representatives came to Saskatoon to help with the investigation.

Residents of Saskatoon and the surrounding area conducted a riverbank search Feb. 4 but nothing was found.

A passerby on the CP Railway bridge found a brown winter jacket that resembled the one that Alsharief commonly wore on Feb. 9 and hung it on a tree behind the Education Building.

Police were unable to confirm that the jacket belonged to Alsharief but it has also not been ruled out.

U of S Students’ Union Vice-President of Academic Affairs Ruvimbo Kanyemba organized a candlelight vigil on Feb. 15 with the help of Alsharief’s friends. Over 100 friends, staff and faculty members attended the vigil in the Bowl. T-shirts were signed with prayers and wishes for Alsharief to return safely and were displayed around campus.

Kanyemba said Alsharief’s disappearance greatly affected his friends in engineering and those he had met while living in campus residences, who helped organize the vigil.

“A lot of his friends were very engaged with the organization of the vigil we had last year,” Kanyemba said. “There were other initiatives that they wanted to put together as well to help people keep an eye out.”

The RCMP’s Historical Case Unit — which specializes in solving long term missing persons cases — included Alsharief in their annual river search in mid-June. This is the most recent search done for Alsharief to date and again it did not come up with any results.

Over the summer, the Saudi Arabian embassy hired an American search crew that uses sonar and dog teams to locate bodies underwater. They searched for Alsharief in the South Saskatchewan River but came up dry.

The embassy also hired a private detective to take on the case.

Knutson believes the abruptness of Alsharief’s disappearance and the lack of clues to his whereabouts is strange.

“We haven’t had anyone disappear as completely as he did,” Knutson said.

Despite Alsharief’s whereabouts still being unknown, the Saudi Arabian embassy is appreciative of the efforts of the Saskatoon police and the RCMP.

“From the embassy’s point of view, the police really have done everything they could and more. That should be clear,” Knutson said. “The embassy is really grateful for the intense efforts of the Saskatoon police.”

A shy and quiet person, Alsharief liked to keep to himself and was mainly seen either on campus studying or at the Saudi Students’ Association socials, where he enjoyed playing soccer. He was friendly and well-liked. He had no known enemies.

Nawaf Alokaiel, a friend of Alsharief’s and fellow member of the SSA, is sad to see a year go by without any sign of his missing friend whose disappearance took their community by surprise.

“I’m a little pained that everyone is forgetting about him,” Nawaf said. “We just hope that we can know something, just a piece of small evidence or something.”

David Hannah, associate vice-president of student affairs, said the university contacted the police as soon as they found out Alsharief had gone missing.

He said although the university officially passed the investigation off to the police they have continued to monitor any updates closely.

Alsharief is 5-8 with a slim build and dark brown hair.

Anyone with information about Alsharief’s whereabouts is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

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Header photo: Raisa Pezderic/The Sheaf