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THE SIDEKICK of a sorcerer, who helped dupe a gullible couple out of gold jewellery, land, cars and more than BD100,000, has lost his final appeal in Bahrain’s highest court.
The Bahraini appellant reportedly aided and abetted the fake shaikh, who claimed to cure ailments through the Quran, in practising sorcery and black magic and conning the couple out of their valuables.
He reportedly delivered so-called ‘blessed water’, ‘magical crystals’, herbs, honey and ‘charmed scrolls’ to the Bahraini couple, and was given a purple Toyota Corolla by the conman, who took the car from the couple.
In 2010, Bahrain criminalised the activity of ‘witchcraft, sorcery or fortune-telling’ in return for money.
Although the 38-year-old construction worker was acquitted in the initial Lower Criminal Court trial, he was later sentenced to two years in jail at the High Criminal Appeals Court after prosecutors appealed the ruling.
The 29-year-old ‘spiritual healer’, who claimed to administer cures to the victims under orders from the Mahdi (Islamic messiah), was sentenced to three years in prison and fined BD5,000.
The victims were a married factory worker and a housewife with children, from Bani Jamra, who reportedly first learned about the conman from the woman’s sister.
It all began in 2020 after the husband underwent neck surgery, the GDN earlier reported, when his wife told him that a ‘religious preacher’ had special powers and could heal him faster.
According to court documents, the appellant was sent by the convicted sorcerer to the victims’ house to collect payments and deliver dupe cures.
Among the items received include a set of gold jewellery worth BD7,000, which the conman claimed to exorcise since it was ‘haunted by ghosts’ and ‘inhabited by beings of the spirit world’.
He had also delivered ‘magical’ gems which the couple were to make into necklaces and wear.
“I was told that there’s a woman who cast a spell on me and my wife to tear us apart, by a man who said he was a shaikh,” the factory worker told police officers.
“He sent the appellant to deliver us blessed water which my family and I drank, and charms which he told us to put in our pillows and even in my wife’s hair.”
The factory worker went on to detail how he was tricked by the duo into transferring over a piece of land in Duraz to the conman where he buried charms in a bid to break a ‘black magic spell’ cast over the property.
“Now, I am certain that he placed malicious spells in the things he gave to me and my wife,” the victim told prosecutors.
Over the course of their engagement, the pretend-clergyman’s demands intensified and he even made the husband buy and gift him a Lexus.
“The sorcerer told us we must give him money, or he’d send his jinni servant to make our lives miserable,” the housewife told police.
She also testified that the sorcerer claimed to act upon orders from the awaited Islamic messiah, the Mahdi.
After his conviction of aiding and abetting the sorcery and swindling, the appellant took to the Cassation Court to appeal the ruling, but judges upheld it.
“The appellant’s participation in the crimes is clear, and his actions eased the committing of the crime,” read the verdict.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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