A MAN jailed for three months for torturing a stray cat that entered his home has had his prison term commuted to community service.
The 35-year-old Bahraini was arrested two hours after a video, which his friend uploaded on social media last month, went viral.
It showed the man throwing plastic water bottles at the animal and later tries to flush it out from behind the sofa with a curtain rod in his Muharraq home.
The video, which was four minutes and 37 seconds long, went viral on social media and sparked outrage among animal welfare activists and a call for action.
The defendant admitted to torturing the cat when he appeared at the Lower Criminal Court two weeks ago, which jailed him for three months for
abusing the animal.
abusing the animal.
His defence lawyer lodged an appeal at the High Criminal Appeals Court requesting for a non-custodial sentence such as community service instead of serving time, which was accepted by the judge.
“The defendant requested to have an alternative punishment to his three-month jail sentence which has been accepted,” read the appeals court ruling.
“His sentence is within the jail time that allows him to be able to receive an alternative punishment.”
Alternative sentences, such as community service or completion of rehabilitation programmes, was made possible by the Alternative Punishments Law, the implementation of which was announced by the attorney general earlier this year.
On August 6, the GDN reported that a criminal complaint has been filed against a woman in Bahrain, who is heard laughing as she films a young girl torturing a kitten.
The homemade video of the incident, circulated online, shows the child squeezing the kitten, pulling its legs and ears – and then putting its head in her mouth.
The complaint has been filed by the Bahrain Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (BSPCA), which believes the woman filming the incident is the child’s mother.
In May 2015, the Lower Criminal Court jailed two men for two months each for burning a caged cat.
The graphic video of the grisly act emerged online in March of that year, showing a frightened cat trapped inside a rusty cage moments before it was torched. The 39-second video was shared on the BSPCA’s Facebook page and members pledged a cash reward of more than BD1,000 to anyone who provided information leading to the arrest of the culprits.
One of the defendants admitted to prosecutors that he had doused the cat in petrol and set it alight in “revenge” for it attacking his birds.
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