Countdown to a death sentence

While Pierrefonds-Dollard Liberal MP Bernard Patry and friends of Mohamed Kohail, the 23-year old former Dollard des Ormeaux resident sentenced to death in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, maintain the young man's final legal recourses are exhausted and he faces near-certain decapitation, the Canadian government told The Chronicle no written verdict has been deposited yet.

"According to our latest information, the (Saudi) court of cassation has not yet delivered a verdict on Mr. Kohail's appeal," said Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Lisa Monette

However, Kohail's close friend, Mahmoud Al-Ken, 23, an Arabic radio station reporter in Montreal, said that is not true. "(The case) goes to the Supreme Court now," Al-Ken, who has been lobbying the Canadian government for action ever since the death sentence was first handed down last March, told The Chronicle.

Al-Ken maintained the last possible appeal launched by the Kohails was rejected last week, as some media have already disclosed. "You can't really appeal to the Supreme Court," he said. In Saudi Arabia, that body basically serves to rubber-stamp verdicts that have already been passed by other courts, he said.

"It's very, very rare," Al-Ken said, that the Supreme Court overturns a previously held decision.

Meanwhile, opposition MP Bernard Patry, in whose riding the Kohails used to live, called on a diplomatic effort by the Canadian government to save Mohamed's life.

"We know that the appeal has been rejected," he said, questioning why the government has not acknowledged this yet.

Patry said he has been working hard with official Liberal foreign affairs critic Dan McTeague on the case. "We're trying to get in touch with the Foreign Affairs Ministry," he said. "They're not returning our phone calls."

Mohamed Kohail's younger brother, Sultan, 18, could also end up facing the death sentence. "The General Court will try him in a matter of weeks," said Al-Ken. Sultan was originally tried as a youth, and was sentenced to a year of jail time and 200 lashes. However, this decision was overturned this summer after he turned 18.



Canadian citizens of Palestinian origin, the Kohail brothers moved to Canada in 2000 with their parents, settling in Dollard home. They temporarily left the country and returned to Saudi Arabia two years ago in order to be with a sick relative and marry off their sister.

In January 2007 trouble began when the younger brother got into a fight at his Jidda school with a Syrian youth, Munzer Haraki, 19, allegedly for having insulted his sister. When Haraki threatened to attack him with some friends, Sultan went to his brother for help, according to Al-Ken.

A fight erupted between two groups of youth, during which Haraki sustained fatal injuries and died. The Kohail brothers and another young man, Muhanna Ezzat, 22, were

charged with his death. Witness testimony filed for Mohamed's appeal claims the two brothers and Ezzat were nowhere near Haraki when a fence collapsed on him and killed him. However, the appeal was rejected.

An informal survey of the homes around the Kohails' old house on Lake Street revealed almost nobody knew about them. "I know their story," said one woman who lives a street over, "but I don’t know them," she said.

Of the nine houses surveyed, only the Kohail's next-door neighbour, Marie Bronhorst, seemed to recall the family. "They were good people," she said at the threshold of her own house while casting a glance at the abandoned Kohail home with its overflowing mailbox. "But they were very quiet."

Bronhorst recalled how the Kohails' pet cat used to sneak into their backyard, much to the delight of her own children. "When they went away on a trip one summer, we kept the cat for them," she explained.

She said the younger brother appeared delighted when the Kohails returned at the end of that summer and he found his cat safe and sound.