An Egyptian man working in Saudi Arabia, Masad Mohamed Abou Wafi el-Gawhari, has been found guilty of stealing 259,000 Saudi riyal from his guarantor. He has been sentenced to one year in prison and 300 medium lashes (60 lashes at a time starting from next week). Masad's wife, Sabah Mohamed Abdel Aziz, who lives in Shubra Sultan village (El-Mahalla El-Kubra in Gharbia Governorate) told Al-Masry Al-Youm that her husband went to work to Saudi Arabia on July 23, 2007. Five months later, though, familiar disputes broke out which required him to get back to Egypt. When he asked his guarantor, Saudi Fuhad bin Aoud al-Rashidi, to let him go back to Egypt, the man kept stalling and when Masad insisted, his guarantor accused him of robbing him, she said. He filed a lawsuit against him, she added, but never attended any session of the trial. The young Egyptian was eventually found guilty. She explained that her husband's family sent a memo to the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on July 3, 2008. Two weeks later, the ministry asked for Masad's residence and passport numbers. Ten days later, it asked for a copy of the sentence to send it to the Egyptian Embassy in Saudi Arabia. Since then, though, no one from the ministry has shown up and the same has happened with the Ministry of Manpower, which she said did not heed their complaint at all. Sabah pointed out that she has been forced to call the Saudi guarantor to beg him to forgive her husband. Instead, he threatened to continue taking revenge on Masad. She called on the Egyptian government to intervene quickly in order to have her husband freed for the sake of their three children.
