Saliha worryingly awaits the destiny of her son who was sentenced to death on April 30 on terrorism charges.
She has repeatedly contacted the Tunisian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Iraqi Embassy in Tunisia in hopes that her son being tried in Tunisia.
Lawyers have expressed their willingness to travel to Iraq to appeal her son’s verdict, but Saliha cannot afford the expenses of their service.
Her psychological state is fragile and she cannot sleep at night unless she takes sleeping pills.
Saliha worryingly awaits the destiny of her son who was sentenced to death on April 30 on terrorism charges.
She has repeatedly contacted the Tunisian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Iraqi Embassy in Tunisia in hopes that her son being tried in Tunisia.
Lawyers have expressed their willingness to travel to Iraq to appeal her son’s verdict, but Saliha cannot afford the expenses of their service.
Her psychological state is fragile and she cannot sleep at night unless she takes sleeping pills.
Every morning she calls human rights associations to help her send the lawyers to Iraq, yet she is still wrought with the threat that she might receive a phone call informing her of her son’s execution.
Saliha’s fears have grown since another Tunisian in Iraq named Yusri Tariqi was recently executed after being convicted of terrorism in November 2011.
Saliha explained that her religious son was arrested in that same year in Iraq by American forces from an internet cafe. He was detained in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison and was later transferred to Taji prison. He had gone to Damascus in 2008 to study Islamic Sharia.
Saliha said the prison’s administration allowed her son to call her at first. Her son claimed that he was the victim of a vicious conspiracy by a terrorist group because he had refused to implement a suicide attack against the Iraqi army.
Before the death sentence was issued on April 30, Saliha received a verbal message from her son through the Red Cross informing her to appeal to the Tunisian Embassy in Iraq to move him from Taji prison.
Saliha did her best to help her son, but it was all in vain, as she received the shocking news of her son’s death sentence by a phone call from an Iraqi woman saying, “Sorry, your son was sentenced to death.”
The painful words still echo in Saliha’s ears. She, like her son, awaits the moment of the execution with great confusion. However, she still hopes that her son will be tried in Tunisia.
“I cannot imagine this tragic ending. I have always dreamt of his promising future,” she said of her son, who finished high school and was a good student.
Saliha said that while her son had religious tendencies since he was young and had always aspired to study Islamic Sharia, he was not an extremist. “He was the victim of terrorist groups who brainwashed him and sent him to a nasty war.”
