A CONVICTED hashish dealer who fled to Qatar 16 years ago has returned to Bahrain to dispute the circumstances of a narcotics crime that took place in 2006.
The High Criminal Court had sentenced the Bahraini to 10 years in prison in 2007 on charges of using hashish and attempting to sell it to a Qatari citizen. He was also fined BD5,000.
However, after a brief spell in a Bahrain psychiatric facility, he fled to Qatar, where he stayed for 16 years.
He returned to Bahrain last year and surrendered himself to authorities after he learned he was wanted by the Interpol.
Yesterday, the 51-year-old appeared at his sixth Supreme Criminal Appeals Court hearing since returning to Bahrain, along with his lawyer Moosa Al Balooshi.
Mr Al Balooshi submitted two memos to judges explaining the events that took place 17 years ago, and blaming the appellant’s now-dead co-defendant for the crime.
Although he earlier stated that the client had left the country against his advice, the memo tells a different story.
“My client could not appear at the appeals trial (in 2007) because he had been in hospital for three months,” the memo read.
“We had requested judges to adjourn the case until he is discharged, but it was rejected.
“His inability to appeal had caused tremendous damage to the appellant and his family. He spent more than 16 years away from his wife, brothers, sisters and his mother, who had died while her son was away. And then, he voluntarily turned himself in.
“Spending years depressed, sad and far from his loved ones is, in itself, a severe punishment.”
In another memo, the lawyer claimed that there was no evidence directly linking the appellant and the hashish stash.
The GDN earlier reported details of the 2006 case, taken from the original court documents, in which session proceedings were written by hand instead of on the computer.
The appellant was initially apprehended after his co-defendant was caught in a sting operation while waiting for the Qatari national to collect narcotics from him.
Police had received a report from a secret source of the co-defendant’s intention to carry out the sale. About 1.5kg of hashish was found in the Bahraini man’s car, stashed under the driver’s seat.
The co-defendant, who was 24 at the time and worked as a photographer, led the police to the appellant, who was then having a meal in a burger restaurant on Budaiya Highway.
He was convicted of possessing hashish with an intention to sell it and was sentenced to 10 years in jail. Traces of hashish were found in urine samples taken from both defendants.
The criminal case against the younger man was dropped after he died in 2006 before the trial ended.
In February 2006, the GDN published an image issued by the Northern Governorate Police Directorate of the two defendants posing with the confiscated drugs.
The Bahraini appellant, who was unemployed at the time, tried to appeal the verdict but the Supreme Criminal Appeals Court rejected the move before hearing any arguments because he was not present in court. The 2007 court transcript revealed that his lawyer had told judges his client was receiving inpatient treatment at a psychiatric hospital. The appeal was rejected and the man fled the country.
Court records show that the appellant was fined twice for public intoxication in the 1990s and was given a six-month suspended sentence in 2002 for drug possession and use.
The lawyer earlier told the GDN that charges against the appellant should be dropped due to an old statute of limitations law.
“The penal code at the time allowed criminal sentences to be dropped a decade after a ruling was issued, although the law has since changed,” he said.
The trial has been adjourned for the court’s response to the defence memo.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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