DUBAI: As the year draws to a close, it is fitting to look back at the Arab icons who died during 2017 — from Kuwaiti actor Abdulhussain Abdulredha to Egyptian singing sensation Shadia, the Middle East lost some of its brightest stars this year.
On Dec. 12, Veteran Saudi singer and a pioneer of Khaleeji music, Abu Bakr Salem aged 78 after a prolonged battle with a disease. He was last seen during the Saudi National Day celebrations in September but could not sing then due to his illness.
Originally from Hadramout, Yemen, a young Salem moved from Traim to Aden where he met several poets, singers and musicians, namely, Lutfi Jafar Aman, Ahmed bin Ahmed Qasim and Mohammad Saad Abdullah, and eventually started singing.
One of his first famous songs was “Ya Ward Ma7la Jamalak.”
In 1967, Salem left Aden for Jeddah, where he pioneered a new genre of music, called Khaleeji music, along with others such as Tariq Abdul-Hakim and Talal Maddah.
On Nov. 28, Egyptian actress and singer Shadia died at the age of 86.
Born Fatimah Shaker but known throughout her career by her single stage name, Shadia suffered a stroke and later went into a coma.
Shadia has more than a 100 films to her name and hundreds of singles in a career that stretches back to the late 1940s.
Her film roles ranged from those depicting country girls, career women, to comical portrayals of emotionally disturbed women and hopeless romantics.
Her iconic songs have defined the entertainment scene for decades, mostly with hit singles in Egypt’s distinctive vernacular Arabic.
In August, renowned Kuwaiti actor Abdulhussain Abdulredha died in London after he fell into a coma.
The 78-year-old was perhaps best known for his role in the 1981 play “Bye Bye London” in which his now ironic first line was “get off my back, I’m in London to have fun. I’m in London to change scenery and enjoy myself. I’m not in London to be put in hospitals or surgeries.”
The actor also played Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in a play in the 1980s, a role for which he gained critical acclaim.
The most iconic Arab celebrities who the world lost in 2017
The most iconic Arab celebrities who the world lost in 2017
Judge declares 4 men wrongly accused of 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders innocent
- The declaration was aimed at closing a dark chapter for the men and their families
- Investigators chased thousands of leads and several false confessions before the four men were arrested in late 1999
TEXAS, USA: A Texas judge on Thursday declared four men who were wrongfully accused of the 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders innocent, formally clearing their names in a courtroom for the first time since the killings of four teenage girls that haunted the city for decades.
“You are innocent,” state District Judge Dayna Blazey said during a hearing in a packed Austin courtroom.
The declaration was aimed at closing a dark chapter for the men and their families, and for a city that was shaken by the brutality of the crime and investigators’ inability to solve it for decades. Blazey called her order “an obligation to the rule of law and the obligation to the dignity of the individual.”
Cold case detectives announced last year that they had connected the killings to a suspect who died in a 1999 standoff with police in Missouri.
Two of the original four suspects, Michael Scott and Forrest Welborn, were in the packed courtroom with family members to hear prosecutors tell the judge that they are innocent. Robert Springsteen, who was initially convicted and spent several years on death row, did not attend. Maurice Pierce died in 2010.
“Over 25 years ago, the state prosecuted four innocent men ... (for) one of the worst crimes Austin has ever seen,” Travis County First Assistant District Attorney Trudy Strassburger said at the opening of the hearing. “We could not have been more wrong.”
A declaration of “actual innocence” would also be a key step for the men and their families to seek financial compensation for years they spent in jail or in prison.
“All four lived under the specter of the yogurt shop murders. These four never had the chance to live normal lives,” Strassburger said.
The murders shocked Austin and confounded investigators for years
Amy Ayers, 13; Eliza Thomas, 17; and sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, ages 17 and 15, were bound, gagged and shot in the head at the “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt” store where two of them worked. The building was set on fire.
Investigators chased thousands of leads and several false confessions before the four men were arrested in late 1999.
Springsteen and Scott were convicted based largely on confessions they insisted were coerced by police. Both convictions were overturned in the mid-2000s.
Welborn was charged but never tried after two grand juries refused to indict him. Pierce spent three years in jail before the charges were dismissed and he was released.
Prosecutors wanted to try Springsteen and Scott again, but a judge ordered the charges dismissed in 2009 when new DNA tests that were unavailable in 1991 had revealed another male suspect.
“Let us not forgot that Robert Springsteen could be dead right now, executed at the hands of the state of Texas,” Springsteen attorney Amber Farrelly said at the hearing.
Connection to a new suspect revealed
The case effectively went cold until 2025. It got new public attention when an HBO documentary series explored the unsolved crime.
Investigators announced in September that new evidence and reviews of old evidence pointed to Robert Eugene Brashers as the killer.
Since 2018, authorities had used advanced DNA evidence to link Brashers to the strangulation death of a South Carolina woman in 1990, the 1997 rape of a 14-year-old girl in Tennessee and the shooting of a mother and daughter in Missouri in 1998.
The link to the Austin case came when a DNA sample taken from under Ayers’ fingernail came back as a match to Brashers from the 1990 murder in South Carolina.
Austin investigators also found that Brashers had been arrested at a border checkpoint near El Paso two days after the yogurt shop killings. In his stolen car was a pistol that matched the same caliber used to kill one of the girls in Austin.
Police also noted similarities in the yogurt shop case to Brashers’ other crimes: The victims were tied up with their own clothing, sexually assaulted and some crime scenes were set on fire.
Brashers died in 1999 when he shot himself during an hourslong standoff with police at a motel in Kennett, Missouri.
