TABUK — Two Saudi brothers, one of them a kidney patient, have been stranded in Cairo for nearly two months after the Egyptian authorities accused them of organ trade and put them on a travel ban. Abdul Ilah Al-Shabrami, one of the two Saudis held up in Egypt, said he accompanied his brother Abdullah, 37, to have a kidney transplant operation in Cairo. He said he had paid $75,000 to obtain a kidney from a dead donor with the approval of the Saudi Embassy in Cairo. "The operation was successful and my brother was recuperating," he added. Shabrami said he and his sick brother were surprised when the Egyptian security officers stormed their apartment and arrested them on charges of colluding with human traffickers. He said his sick brother was kept in a government hospital under police guard and was taken handcuffed to his bed. He said he presented a bail of 60,000 Egyptian pounds to take his brother out of the hospital. "I tried to travel home but discovered that I was blacklisted, prevented from traveling and listed as wanted by the security agencies," he said. Shabrami said when he approached the police, he was detained for two days and had to pay another bail of 60,000 Egyptian pounds to be released from custody. Shabrami appealed to the concerned authorities to rescue him and his sick brother and to facilitate their journey home especially that the ban on their travel still holds. He said they were living in a rented apartment and that his brother needed to be secluded for a period of three months to complete his post-surgery recovery. "My brother's detention in his room would aggravate his health condition," he said. Shabrami also spoke about cases involving Saudi citizens who have been slapped with similar charges by Egyptian security authorities. He said he had contacted the Saudi Embassy several times and was given promises that their case would be solved but it was not. A number of citizens created a hashtag on Twitter under the title "Saudi patients detained in Egypt". They spoke about the predicament of these patients during their trips to Egypt for treatment and asked the embassy to follow up their cases and rectify their situations.
