THE GLOBE AND MAIL: WASHINGTON — For the past four months, home for Mohamed Kohail has been a filthy prison cell in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he says he has been pushed, slapped and abused, and forced into signing a confession for a murder he did not commit.
In a country where capital punishment by beheading is still the law of the land, the 22-year-old Canadian citizen says he fears the worst from the Saudi judicial system, which has accused him of killing a Syrian youth in a vicious schoolyard brawl. His 16-year-old brother also is being held in relation to the death.
“It's going to be death for now,” Mr. Kohail told The Globe and Mail Monday in an extraordinary interview on a friend's cellphone from inside the prison. “That is what the investigators asked from the court.”
“I'm afraid of everything,” he continued in accented English, saying he never wanted to return to Saudi Arabia after spending five years in Canada. “I really want to go back to Canada now. I like everything in Canada.” Canadians face beheading in Saudi Arabia (more) By Alan Freeman
Mark Alexander
