THE conviction of a man jailed on charges of possessing Molotov cocktails, assaulting policemen and gathering illegally has been overturned after 11 years of the date of the alleged incident.
The Cassation Court has ordered a retrial of the case due to a series of procedural discrepancies that rendered the initial ruling invalid, judges said.
The retrial order was based on the fact that the appellant could not attend earlier hearings because he had reportedly not been notified about them while in custody.
In 2012 the man was accused of participating in actions in the Northern Governorate that allegedly threatened national security.
In 2014, the Lower Criminal Court sentenced him to three years in jail, convicted multiple co-defendants on similar charges and ordered the confiscation of incendiary devices.
He was found guilty of colluding with unknown individuals to form an illegal gathering and was also found guilty of assaulting two police officers and causing injuries that took more than 20 days to heal, along with assaulting a third policeman but not causing lasting injuries.
In 2016, he took to the High Criminal Appeals Court but the appeal was thrown out because he was not present at the final hearing.
Appeal
Only this May, after nine years of the initial guilty ruling and seven years after the appeal that was not accepted, the Bahraini man lodged a final appeal at the country’s highest court.
“The appellant is objecting to the fact that his first appeal was dropped due to a factor he had no hand in,” the defence argued at the Cassation Court. “He was deprived of his freedom during the course of the appeal’s trial and hence was unable to appear at the hearing.
“The ‘Inmate’s Refusal of Internal or External Movements’ form, which was submitted by the prison administration to the court, was not signed by him, according to a number of witnesses. As per the law, the prison warden or an equivalent thereof, should inform prisoners about their court dates, but there was no evidence that he was informed.”
The defence argument added that the initial ruling was issued in absentia, which meant that he could have objected to it within the initial trial should he appear in person before judges, but that he was not allowed to.
“He was not at the hearing and, therefore, he couldn’t have objected to it in the first place. His knowledge of the first hearing does not suffice. Moreover, the ruling was upheld in his case even though the court found one of his co-defendants innocent, which is contradictory.”
Based on the appellant’s defence argument, the case was overturned and returned to the court it began in, namely the Lower Criminal Court.
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