Among the 82 prisoners granted presidential pardon by President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi last week has been Ahmed Galal Muhammad, 30, from the city of Sohag, some 450km south of Cairo.
Muhammad’s pardon comes to him and his young wife Amna Abdullah as an amazing gift from heaven. He had been handed a life sentence for belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that has been designated a terrorist group in Egypt. But his wife of one year insists that he has no Islamist leanings whatsoever, but was framed by someone who held a grudge against him.
When Muhammad went to prison, Amna led a hard life. She had to work at three jobs just to make ends barely meet, but this was not her main problem. Her family, seeing there was no future for the young woman tied to someone imprisoned for life, filed on her behalf for divorce from Muhammad.
During her first visit to Muhammad in prison, Amna told him of the divorce. “Accept what your family says,” he told her. “I will never be back home till 25 years on.”
“I’ll wait for you even if it were for 50 years,” she said.
“Go get married and have children,” he said, “this is your natural need and right, and you don’t have a chance with me.”
“No,” she insisted, “I have no need for children without you.”
Now Muhammad is back home. Amna says he never complained of any bad treatment when he was in prison, and that whenever she visited him she was treated with respect. Today they can look forward to having the baby Muhammad wanted her so much to have…his own baby.
WATANI International
20 November 2016