Trial begins in Cairo of man accused of killing three Egyptians in Qatar

The accused who flew to Cairo was arrested immediately upon arrival at Cairo airport

CAIRO: A criminal court in Egypt began on Sunday the trial of a man accused of killing three Egyptians in Qatar, Al Sharq has reported quoting the Egyptian media.

The accused had previously confessed to killing two brothers and their friend, all of them Egyptians, with the intention of robbing them inside their apartment in Qatar, and the culprit who escaped and flew to Cairo was arrested immediately upon his arrival at Cairo Airport.

The East Cairo Prosecution in the Egyptian capital had decided to refer the accused to the Criminal Court last January to sentence him after he confessed to the crime.

The man confessed to killing the two brothers and their friend, identified as Ali Shabaan and siblings Abdelsalam and Jom’a Mahrous, after a failed drug and robbery operation.

“I used to see them put their money in a safe inside the house…I decided to drug them, rob them and run away,” the killer told Cairo’s Public Prosecution Office.

Relatives of the victims at the time said the three Egyptian men were stabbed to death in their home by the man.

The accused revealed before the East Cairo Prosecution Office that he travelled to Qatar to watch the World Cup in 2022, explaining that he “decided to stay in Qatar and look for a job, but he was not lucky, so he spent days on the street looking for housing and a job opportunity.

He explained that he “met with the victims and they offered him accommodation, and stayed with them for several days until they looked for a job opportunity for him,” noting that he “stayed with them until last Eid al-Fitr, and then they told him that they had booked him a return ticket to Egypt because they failed to place him in any job.”

The accused said that he bought sleeping pills and put them in the victims’ drink, but its effect was weak, so they woke up after a while and discovered that he was trying to rob them, and a quarrel broke out between them.

He continued: “They were unable to move due to the effect of the sleeping pills, and I was able to beat them and kill them. Then I found their friend entering and he saw them dead, so he tried to hit me, but I stabbed him with a knife, killing him also.”

The accused fled after the crime and the Qatari police coordinated with Interpol and the Egyptian authorities, and the accused was arrested at Cairo International Airport where he had arrived from Doha.

Crimes are rare in Qatar, which is regularly ranked as one of the safest countries in the world.