PROSECUTORS have requested the death penalty be carried out if judges convict the suspect of a high-profile case involving the alleged murder of a ‘Sanad girl’.
Previously undisclosed details about the killing were revealed yesterday in a statement issued by the Public Prosecution.
A 35-year-old Bahraini has been accused of murdering a Bahraini girl and dumping her body in a Sanad mangrove reserve earlier this year, following an attempt by the victim to blackmail him, the High Criminal Court heard.
He has denied a charge of premeditated murder. He has also been accused of the desecration of a corpse and consensual sexual assault of a minor aged between 14 and 21 years.
Yesterday, ahead of the trial’s final hearing, police set up barricades outside of the High Criminal Court and restricted entry into the courtroom only to lawyers, defendants and members of the media.
Amidst the courtroom’s tense atmosphere, a Public Prosecution representative made the death penalty request.
Throughout the hearing, the defendant stood with his head bowed down and with his hand covering his face.
“Your honours, we request that the maximum penalty is handed out to the defendant – the death penalty,” the prosecutor said as he addressed the judges.
“The defendant should be executed in order to excise society of a corrupt, wicked and no-good individual and so that he is made into an example to those who want to commit such a crime.”
The prosecutor also argued that the defendant should be executed so that ‘the fire in the chests of the victim’s parents is finally put out’.
The court heard that an unidentified, female corpse in advanced stages of decay was found in a remote area of the Ras Sanad Mangrove Forest in June.
Investigators were able to identify the young woman using DNA analysis. The Bahraini girl had been reported missing 45 days prior.
Police eventually tracked the defendant down through informants, and the court was told that he admitted to officers that he had been in a romantic relationship with the victim and killed her for fear of their illicit affair being revealed.
In police interrogations, he claimed he killed her because she threatened to expose their relationship and share compromising photographs she had taken of him, and he could not afford to pay her off.
According to the prosecutor’s statement, the defendant said the ‘blackmail led him to decide to get rid of the girl’ and he arranged to meet her in April in Dar Kulaib.
“He picked her up in a van belonging to a restaurant his mother owns and took her to a secluded dirt area that he reached through a rarely-used internal road.
“When they got there, he struck her on her throat with his elbow, but did not stop there when she lost consciousness, but took her to another secluded area in Malkiya Beach and chose to kill her through strangulation.
“As soon as they got there, he put his knees on her hands in order to restrain her and stop her from moving, then he proceeded to hit her on her face while cursing at her.
“Finally, he strangled her with both his hands until her soul left her body, then threw her phone into the sea.”
The statement continued that the defendant drove home with her corpse in the back of the van, and decided the next morning to travel to the Sanad coast ‘since he has extensive knowledge of the area due to his job.’
“He got rid of the body between the trees, and then picked up a discarded metal skewer and inserted it into the neck to make sure that his plans to kill her had succeeded.”
Prosecutors concluded the statement by claiming that there is ‘undoubted proof’ of the suspect’s guilt, thanks to his detailed confession and his step-by-step re-enactment of the crime before the Public Prosecution.
Testimonies of the investigator, the victim’s parents, the medical examiner and the man who uncovered the corpse were also evidence of the defendant’s guilt, it added.
After the prosecutor called on judges to sentence the man to death, his lawyer argued that the charge should be changed to manslaughter because the killing was ‘a spur of the moment’ action.
The lawyer added that the victim’s alleged ‘blackmail, threats and insults’ along with her spitting at the defendant were mitigating factors in the case against the defendant because he had been provoked.
Before the hearing ended, the leading judge asked the defendant if he had anything to say, ‘to be the last to speak before the case is closed.’
“I was under a dangerous circumstance, and that’s all that happened,” the Bahraini man said while wiping away his tears.
The High Criminal Court adjourned the trial to Wednesday, when a verdict will be issued.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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