Saudi Arabia is still a backward country

Mohamed Kohail, 23, and his brother Sultan, who turns 17 this week, (both Canadian citizens) were involved in a schoolyard brawl in Saudi Arabia that left one person dead. The two boys were involved in a fight that broke out after a girl's male cousin accused Sultan of insulting her. According to the account of the Kohail brothers, Mohamed Kohail arrived at the school with a male friend to face about a dozen of the girl's male relatives and friends. Some were armed with clubs and knives. The man who died in the fight was Munzer Haraki, 19, a cousin of the girl who was allegedly insulted. According to accounts from the family and others, Sultan was accused of insulting a Syrian girl named Raneem. Sultan was told that friends and relatives of the girl were coming to school to kidnap him and teach him a lesson. So he called Mr. Kohail, who then went to the Edugates International School, a school frequented by non-Saudi Arabs in a posh suburb of Jeddah, with a friend, to defend his little brother.

According to an account in the Arabic newspaper Okaz, a brawl ensued at the school involving 14 young people, with Palestinians facing off against Syrians. “As the physical attack intensified, one of the Palestinians (Mohamed allegedly) grabbed a Syrian boy named Monther, punched him violently and slammed his head against the school yard fence. Monther fell on the ground and died instantly.” The dead youth has since been identified as Munzer Haraki. Mohamed has stated and I quote; “I didn't touch anyone. There were 13 people who were beating me up. … They used knives and sticks and bricks.” He said he suffered injuries to his shoulder, ribs and eyes, and broke his front teeth. He was taken to the hospital and later arrested and charged with murder. If this happened in Canada, he would be charged with manslaughter, not murder.

Mohamed says that while he was in prison, he had been pushed, slapped, spit on and abused. He also says that he was conned by one of the police officers into signing a confession for a murder he did not commit. He said that the policeman told him; “You have to sign, because if you sign the papers, you will get out of prison.” In Canada, such a confession would never get past a judge, let alone be heard by a jury.

Mohamed’s trial took place over a period of nine, 10-minute sessions and the judge upon convicting the young man of murder, sentenced him to death on February 4th. He is to be publicly beheaded by a sword. He was given thirty days in which to appeal.

Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier said the government is prepared to help the family with an appeal. "We're very disappointed in the trial decision in that case," Bernier said during question period in the Commons yesterday.

Bernier said, "The prime minister, the secretary of state and myself have discussed the situation with the Saudi authorities and we're prepared to help the family so that they can appeal that decision and we hope that ultimately the verdict will be changed."

The government of Canada has stressed in the past that it no longer wishes to interfere with cases in which citizens of Canada are sentenced to death in other countries.

The Toronto Sun conducted a poll and of the 3200 people who responded, 62% of those polled said that the government of Canada should not interfere with the verdict or the sentence in this matter.

I submitted my vote in favour of interfering because I believe that the government should try to get the verdict and sentence reversed. I don’t think a fight, especially one where a death that ensues may be considered manslaughter, should be considered as a murder and the sentence is far too harsh considering the circumstances of the event.

Since September 2006, at least 143 men and women have been executed in the Saudi Arabian Kingdom, which is one of the highest execution rates in the world.

International law prohibits Saudi Arabia from executing people for crimes committed when they are below the age of 18. Saudi Arabian officials have maintained that they comply with this obligation, contained in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, because they do not execute children. In fact, the convention prohibits executions for crimes committed while a person is a child, regardless of when the sentence is carried out.

Due to the strict secrecy of the criminal justice system, it is not possible to know how many juvenile offenders have been put to death in Saudi Arabia, but according to a media report, over 100 juvenile offenders are said to be on death row. They include Rizana Nafeek, a Sri Lankan national who was 17 at the time of the alleged murder for which she was sentenced to death following her arrest in 2005. Dhahian Rakan al-Sibai'i was sentenced to death for a murder he allegedly committed when he was just 15 years old. He was held in a juvenile facility until his 18th birthday and then moved to an adult prison. He was subsequently beheaded. They may also include Sultan Kohail, a 16-year-old Canadian national who was tried early this year on murder charges along with his brother Mohamed Kohail.

Trial proceedings usually take place behind closed doors without adequate legal representation, and invariably fall short of international fair trial standards. Both children and adults are often convicted on the basis of "confessions" obtained under duress, including torture or other ill-treatment during incommunicado detention. Defendants are rarely allowed formal representation by a lawyer, and in many cases are not informed of the progress of legal proceedings against them.

The condemned kneels in a public square with his hands bound behind his back. He is blindfolded and his head is not bowed but is upright. The executioner steps up behind him with a sword in one hand and then he swings the sword as hard as he can and the condemned’s head is cut off and falls to the ground. The body falls forward with blood gushing out of the stump of his neck until the heart stops beating.

The Islamic Shariah narrows the scope of application of the hudud (severe penalties) in three ways:

(i) It requires evidence of the commission of the offence, which can be proved only through the testimony of witnesses (four witnesses being needed in some cases) or through a confession by the offender, which must be maintained until the judgment is carried out. If the offender retracts his confession before or during the enforcement of a hadd penalty, it is halted and replaced by another discretionary penalty if the conditions therefore are met.

(ii) It restricts the hadd penalties to offences constituting violations in any of the five above-mentioned vital fields.

(iii) It stipulates that hadd penalties cannot be imposed if there is any doubt concerning the offender's guilt.

I wasn’t at this young man’s trial but I am wondering if he was given the benefit of the application of the hudud as laid down by the Islamic Shariah

Is this what Canadians want to have happen to a fellow Canadian, based on what trumped up charges by the Saudi Arabian police the young man was convicted of? Did the 38% who said in the poll that they didn’t think the Canadian government should interfere, look into the background of this case before they made their decision to ignore the plight of this young man? Would they readily condemn the man if he was a relative or close friend?

In 1976 in a report that I sent to the Canadian parliament with respect to abolishing capital punishment in Canada, I expressed my concern that innocent people may be hanged. In the United States, over a hundred men who were on death row in the last ten years were later found to be innocent.

The late John Diefenbaker, (former prime minister of Canada) told me that the execution of an innocent person was the main reason why capital punishment in Canada was abolished in 1976.

No matter how you look at it, Saudi Arabia is a backward country. The abuses they subject their women too is proof beyond question that the Saudis have much to learn about human rights and justice. It may take many years before that backward country finally treats all of its citizens as equals. It will probably take as many years for that country to hand out justice evenly so that all persons will get a fair trial.

UPDATE: On January 25, 2010, the Supreme Court of Saudi Arabia announced that Mohamed Kohail would no longer be put to death. At the time of this writing, both he and his younger brother are still in prison.