I WAS left speechless and dumbfounded as if words rattled in my mouth. Even though I wanted to speak, I was unable to utter a single word. This was when I listened to a bewildered woman who spoke about her son who had been unjustly executed in Iraq. The mother of Mazin Muhammad Masawee was speaking with a broken heart. Mazin was executed in an Iraqi prison last month after he had been tortured to extract confessions about crimes he had not committed. After a month-long procedure, his body was brought to the Kingdom this past Friday. His mother told us earlier that she would never believe the news of his son's death until she sees his dead body with her own eyes. We hear about stories of our children languishing in Iraqi prisons. Most of them were detained after crossing the border illegally. Under the Iraqi law, punishment for illegal entry into the country is a maximum six-year jail sentence. But in reality, Saudis are being subjected to inhumane treatment and are given unfair verdicts at farcical trials. A report published by Amnesty International on Aug. 30, 2012, said, “Amnesty International's concerns are compounded by the flaws in the Iraqi criminal justice system. Since the death penalty was reintroduced in Iraq in 2004, hundreds of people have been sentenced to death and are now on death row. Many of the trials of those sentenced to death have failed to meet international fair trial standards, including by allowing confessions obtained under duress or other ill-treatment to be used as evidence against those accused.” Saudi prisoner Nasser who was sentenced to death said the following about the suffering of his countrymen: “We are unable to describe our suffering. We have been subjected to the harshest forms of torture. They have taken confessions from us under duress. Investigators forced us to sign on a blank paper to implicate us in crimes that we had not committed.” Nasser continued, “I am awaiting death every moment. I anticipate the entry of the warden to take me to the gallows in a while, but I am a believer. I have prepared myself either to die free or live free.” He concluded his words by revealing the reason behind the unfair treatment of young Saudis. “One of the Iraqi prison guards shouted at me saying: ‘We lured you here. There are Iraqi prisoners in Saudi Arabia. We want to use you as bargaining chips'.” I would be surprised if any real efforts are being made by the Saudi media and the intellectual elite to stand by our children. Our press has not been paying any attention to their plight. It is only recently that our newspapers started covering their issue. Apparently, the dignity of our profession prevents us from exerting efforts to support our children. Even if they had committed mistakes in their youth (most of them went to Iraq while they were between 18 and 21), it is unfair to abandon them as they rot in the darkness of prisons, having been subjected to the worst forms of torture, psychological humiliation and physical abuse. Why isn't our embassy in Amman assigning lawyers to plead for them? Why didn't a single official of the Human Rights Commission or the National Society for Human Rights visit them and take stock of their situations and fulfill their needs? Perhaps, this is not the time to reproach each other. But the situation is dreadful as I realized from lengthy telephone calls with the Saudi prisoners. Nobody approached them to ask about their condition. These prisons put a test to the human dignity, and there is an ugly sectarian discrimination. When officials realize that they are Saudis, they immediately treat them harshly. Saudi prisoners went on hunger strike last Wednesday at Nasiriyah prison in protest against sectarian discrimination and demanded that they be transferred to another prison. They told me directly that Iranian officers used to question them. The situation is painful and unfortunate, and I wish everyone who reads my writing visualizes for a moment that his son is there – God forbid – and then read what Human Rights Watch said about these prisons and the living condition of prisoners in general. In its report dated Jan. 21, 2011, HRW said: “The narrations of men imprisoned there were credible and consistent. The prisoners said security personnel kicked, whipped and beat them, asphyxiated them, gave them electric shocks, burned them with cigarettes, and pulled out their fingernails and teeth. They said interrogators sodomized some detainees with sticks and pistol barrels. Some young men said they were forced to perform oral sex on interrogators and guards, and that interrogators forced detainees to sexually molest one another.” I appeal to the intellectual elite, media persons and others to stand by our youths detained in the neighboring country by mounting pressure on the Iraqi government to conclude a security agreement to exchange prisoners.
