Mohamed Bishr was minding his own business last Sunday, walking to a local cafe in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, when three black-suited guys grabbed him and shoved him in the back of a van. They kidnapped him and beat him, and planned to force him to perform in adult films because he looks like the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

"The three men, who had guns hanging from their belts, forced me out of my car and shoved me into a van, hitting my head," Bishr, a devout Muslim, told Ahram's Arabic portal from his hospital bed.

The incident was short but traumatic. Bishr said the last thing he remembers was the men yelling at each other, and then throwing him out of the van where he hit his face on the pavement.

Passers-by quickly gathered around but were too afraid to apprehend the apparently armed kidnappers.

Bishr's son, Mahmoud, said that his father had previously met with a group of unidentified people — who spoke Arabic in an Iraqi or Syrian dialect — and had been offered LE2 million pounds (US$333,000) to impersonate the late dictator in a pornographic video. Bishr refused.