By Rannie Amiri
At the time of this writing, Ali Hussain Sibat is still alive.
It is unknown for how long he will be however, for he is set to be executed in Saudi Arabia at any moment for the undefined crime of practicing “sorcery” and “witchcraft.”
As Robert Fisk aptly penned, “Some stories from the Middle East make you want to weep. But this one is truly heart-breaking.”
The details of his case are rather simple: Ali Sibat (alternative spelling, Sbatt) is a poor, Lebanese Shia Muslim truck driver who went to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina in May 2008 to perform the minor pilgrimage, or umra. While in Medina, the Saudi Religious Police or mutawa’een, broke into his hotel room and arrested him for practicing “sorcery” (how they managed to track him down is beyond me). It seems Mr. Sibat once worked for a Lebanese satellite television station where he gave counsel and encouragement to troubled callers by “predicting” good things would happen to them.
My comment on this story posted on the Palestinian Pundit:
Not weeping but cold rage for me! Those are NOT my people but the enemy within that we need to fight in the same elan we fight Zionism..When obscurantism extends itself to become a crime against humanity, there should be no hesitation..
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I don't know why blogger won't let me edit posts anymore. I was going to correct your spelling of executed.
ReplyDelete<span>I don't know Molly. My guess is that only the administrator can do that.</span> But if it's something that you could do just recently but not anymore, I don't know why or how this change came about.
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