A COURT has cut the jail time of a man who broke the knee of a female security guard at a luxury hotel in Manama after she tried to stop him from harassing female guests.
The assault reportedly left the Bahraini woman with a 10 per cent disability, and medical reports indicate that she still suffers from a limp and chronic pain nearly two years after the incident.
The High Criminal Court yesterday amended the 37-year-old Saudi’s sentence to two years in jail after earlier sentencing him in absentia to three years behind bars.
The Public Prosecution earlier asked the court to reject the defendant’s objection and not grant any mercy for his violent action in January 2022.
However, the defence claimed that it was the defendant’s first crime.
The fact that he has a six-year-old son with a heart condition who will soon be undergoing cardiac surgery has also been a mitigating factor that led to the reduced sentence.
The accused was convicted in absentia in February this year on charges of assault, unintentionally causing a long-term disability, and insulting the victim’s honour in a public place.
However, he visited Bahrain in August unaware that there was an arrest warrant out for him.
But since anyone convicted in absentia can file an objection, the defendant lodged an objection and denied the accusations.
In an interview with Exhibition Road Police Station officers shortly after the assault, the man claimed that the victim was ‘acting’ and that she had ‘thrown herself onto the floor’.
During the final hearing, his defence doubted that the victim ever suffered from a disability, and accused her of lying and manipulating the injury before the forensic doctor examined her.
They claimed that the woman did not take any sick leave or days off after the incident, which ‘shed doubt on her claims’.
“She went straight back to work and did not miss a single day. How could she have done that with a broken knee?” the defence memo stated.
“The doctor took a long time to prepare the medical report – nine months after the fact – enough time to allow the victim to change the features of the injury to influence the results of the medical report.”
The defence further tried to dismiss any responsibility the defendant may have had for the attack, stating that he was inebriated and had no control of his actions.
The victim earlier testified to seeing a man who was causing a disturbance to some women outside the five-star-hotel hotel’s lobby, stating that she approached him to ask him to stop, after he which he assaulted her.
She said that he grabbed her wrist, called her mother obscene names and slammed her to the floor, breaking her leg.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
&uuid=(email))