LUXOR/CAIRO: Hajjah Hediyah never imagined she would lose her son, Haggag Mohamed Al-Sa'di, in this way - sentenced to death on a charge of raping 18 children. The desperate Egyptian mother experienced some of the hardest days of her life recently when she spent four days in Kuwait, visiting her son in the psychiatric hospital, where he is being held on a court ruling to determine his mental condition before he is executed. Hediyah's face is wrinkled with time and misery, a torment heightened recently when she realized that her son, whom she believes to be innocent, will be executed after receiving the death penalty. She has appealed to the Emir of Kuwait and the Egyptian Foreign Minister to intervene to probe the case again, certain that he has been framed. Crying, she said, "My son is wronged and not guilty. Talking after her visit to her son, she said, "After the death sentence was issued, a businessman helped me travel to Kuwait to see my son, and paid for the expenses. Dr Samir Farag, the head of Luxor City, completed the procedures to obtain a visa. I traveled to Kuwait and stayed four days with the family of the businessman, who paid for the trip. One day after her arrival, she visited her son at the mental hospital. Haggag maintains that he is psychologically sound and that he did not commit any crime. He says he has been told by hospital staff that he will be "definitely executed. "My son Haggag swore that he did not commit any crime. He traveled to Kuwait upon the advice of his father, who worked there, continued Hediyah. "He worked as a trainer at a bodybuilding center, having received instruction from world champion Al-Shahat Mabrouk. According to Haggag's story, a young trainee at the center quarreled with him and slapped him on his face. Haggag slapped the trainee back, unaware he was the son of a senior official there. Once the quarrel was over, the father of the crisis young man came and vowed that Haggag "would not drink again from the Nile and that he would return to Cairo in a "coffin, according to Hediyah. She says that friends of her son had advised him to leave Kuwait immediately and even paid for his travel expenses. However, he was arrested at the airport. Haggag initially thought that he had been arrested over the quarrel in the gym, says his mother. He later found - to his shock - that he was charged with the rape of 18 children of various nationalities, a crime that was making headlines at that time. The Kuwaiti authorities had arrested 70 suspects and released all of them except for Haggag, who stayed in jail for 20 days, during which time he claims to have been tortured to the extent that he made an confession. "My son was surprised that the evidence against him was perfect to the extent that they left him no room to save himself or to prove his innocence, says Hediyah. "The children did not recognize him; the perpetrator was shorter and smaller and did not look like my son. However, the manipulation of those involved in the forensic report has led my son to the gallows. The distraught mother continued, saying: "On the third day I found my son chained to the bed while he was sleeping. He was cuffed by his hands and feet. I tried to relax him with the Quran and encourage him to be patient. I lied to him and told him that the death sentence had been commuted to life imprisonment. Hediyah wants to know why her son has been given the death penalty for his alleged crimes, when the penalty for rape is only three years imprisonment. Her final hope is in the Emir of Kuwait and the Egyptian Foreign Minister to re-examine the case and save her son from the gallows.
