Nadia Al-Dabbas - Kuwait

It did not happen in the minds of the young Kuwaiti that his life would turn from a diligent student in school in the United States to a defendant serving a harsh sentence behind prison bars.   

Despite the bitterness of the prison and the cruelty of his years, Yasser Al-Bahri was able to overcome the ordeal of the prison. He wrote books and made many prisoners at his hands, after a US court sentenced him to 15 years in prison for harassing and raping a girl, a charge he denies.

Yasser grew up distinguished among his peers, so he became a professional footballer, and he was chosen as a key element in the Kuwait youth team, but the Iraqi invasion prevented him from a sporting career that many expected to be promising, and his hobby of music led him to learn to play a number of stringed instruments such as the lute, violin, piano and classical guitar.

Yasser was barely 22 years old until he composed a song entitled "Oh Our Sheikh Waya Saad" sung by Kuwaiti singer Hamad Al-Rashed on the occasion of the return of then-Crown Prince Sheikh Saad Al-Abdullah Al-Sabah from a medical trip, and that was in 1997.

Luck remained with Yasser when he decided to enter the world of trade at the beginning of his youth, as he invested his share of the legacy left by his father in the Kuwaiti Stock Exchange and a number of emerging companies, which earned him great profits and doubled his money in a few years.

Yasser created an Arab cafe with his brother Abdullah, which cost them $ 300,000, which became the most famous Florida café (Al Jazeera Net)

During his studies in Philosophy at Kuwait University, Yasser was a superior, so that after the end of the university years he was chosen by the Head of the Philosophy Department personally to complete his postgraduate studies in the United States and to obtain the master's and doctoral degrees through a scholarship that Kuwait University paid for.

The beginning of the tragedy The


story of Yasser Al-Bahri, who traveled to the United States in 2001, recounts to Al-Jazeera, his two brothers Muhammad and Abdullah, with tears in their eyes, saying that Yasser, after he arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, obtained a master's degree in political philosophy, and he married his dream girl, who is a daughter His uncle and God blessed him with two daughters.

After that, Yasser moved with his wife and two daughters to the state of Florida to obtain a doctorate degree, specifically in the Tallahassee area, where his sister who is studying for a doctorate also lives and lives with her husband.

The two brothers Muhammad and Abdullah complete the story, saying that Yasser had plenty of time, so he decided to establish a business, and he chose to open an Arabic-style café in partnership with his younger brother Abdullah, which cost them three hundred thousand dollars, so the cafe served oriental food and drinks besides shisha. And it quickly became the largest and most famous of all Florida cafes.

The cafe, which is located near the university edifice, now generates an income of two thousand dollars a day, which is what made Yasser happy with this success, as his brother Abdullah adds.

Yasser’s brothers: One of the recent workers in the cafe accused our brother of harassing her and he was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment (Al-Jazeera Net)

As soon as Yasser reached this success, the chapters of his tragedy began. In 2007 things did not go according to what Yasser had hoped, who bought a house in the Tallahassee area for two hundred thousand dollars and prepared it as a surprise for his wife and two children to live in. One day, an employee was accused who did not complete her fourth day of work in the cafe Yasser harassed and raped her and filed a complaint.

Fearing that Yasser would leave the United States, the police submitted a request to the judge to arrest him and prevent him from traveling, and although Yasser’s family said that the American lawyer who appointed Yasser for half a million dollars was always promising him to quickly release him because all the medical examinations of the girl showed Yasser’s innocence of assaulting her. The jury in court supported the girl, as the judge finally sentenced Yasser to 15 years in prison.

Seven prisons,


Yasser went through a very difficult period during his movement in seven prisons in the state of Florida, in which the majority of its inmates were black Americans and Latinos. He was only relieved of his refuge, his closeness to God, and his family members standing by his side and supporting him despite the distances involved.

Muhammad al-Bahri says that his brother Yasser saw the desire of many prisoners to learn about Islam when they watched him praying, and more than 500 people converted to Islam on his hands, and he established four Islamic libraries in different prisons with the help of his wife and family members who used to send all the books that he asked of them. By shipping, despite the difficulties they were going through with the introduction of such books.

Lawyer Abdel-Rahman Al-Saqlawi: Yasser will be released at the end of this month (Al-Jazeera Net)

In prison, Yasser learned Spanish and sign language, in addition to his proficiency in English and a little bit of Persian.

The prison did not prevent Yasser from writing books. During his imprisonment he wrote 22 books, some of which appeared to the light, such as "Behind the Barbed Wire," and "A Thousand Nights of Solitary Confinement" in Arabic, in addition to a book in English entitled "Jesus Resuscitated" .

Yasser’s lawyer in Kuwait, Abd al-Rahman al-Saqlawi, told Al-Jazeera Net that Yasser is on a date with al-Hurriya at the end of this month, and if he is released on time, he will be transferred to the reception prison, and from there to immigration prison, according to the procedures of the Federal Immigration Administration, as his residency has long since expired. He must go through deportation procedures.

He adds, "If things go well and the immigration judge has ruled in his favor, Yasser will return to his country, Kuwait. As a lawyer, he will have to deal with the case of loans that Yasser had obtained from a bank to finance the cafe project, in addition to the case of the debts of the Kuwait University mission after it was withdrawn." The grant from him is due to the case that he paid for 15 years of his life behind bars in American prisons. "