A man who gave a ride to a murder suspect and his victim on the day of an alleged killing, in exchange for drugs, testified in court yesterday.
The acquaintance of the Bahraini defendant, who is on trial for allegedly strangling a Kazakhstani woman to death then burning her body, was heard by High Criminal Court judges.
No human remains have been found of the sex worker, claimed prosecutors, after the 44-year-old allegedly burned her corpse for more than six continuous hours in an attempt to hide the evidence.
Besides premeditated murder, desecrating a corpse and using drugs, the married father-of-six was also charged with giving hashish to the witness in return for a favour.
“On the day of the incident, the defendant appeared completely normal, and I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary,” the Bahraini witness testified.
“I picked up the defendant from his house in Nuwaidrat then drove him to Exhibition Road, where his friend (the victim) got in the car, then I dropped them off back at his house.
“Later in the day, he called me, but I didn’t answer the phone because I didn’t want to drive his friend back to her place.”
During the cross-examination, the presiding judge refused some of the questions that defence lawyer Ameena Al Doseri wanted to ask the man.
Upon being asked about the nature of his relationship with the murder suspect, the witness stated that it was a ‘superficial’ one, and that he only drove him places from time to time.
More witnesses were set to be cross-examined yesterday, including the victim’s elderly Kazakhstani mother, but the court did not have a Russian interpreter, and the hearing was adjourned.
Another individual was also meant to be heard, but he was nowhere to be found while court was in session, despite initially registering his presence with the bailiff.
The GDN earlier reported that the defendant confessed in police interrogations to committing the murder in his parents’ house, but denied it was premeditated.
He told police he met the sex worker on social media and brought her home at dawn but tried to stop her from leaving in the evening ‘so that his family didn’t see her’.
The man described how an argument escalated into a physical struggle, which eventually ended in him strangling her from behind ‘until her soul left her body’, the court heard.
After killing her, the accused stated that he borrowed a pick-up truck from a neighbour and transported her corpse to a small farm he owned, using wood and petrol to burn her body.
A Central Investigation Department (CID) agent tracked down a 999 call police had received from a woman pleading for help stating she was being kept captive ‘in a house near Sitra’.
Authorities were first alerted of the Kazakhstani woman’s disappearance by the Russian Embassy after her 76-year-old mother had reached out to diplomats because her home country had no base in Bahrain.
In previous hearings, the court heard the testimonies of a coroner and a K9 unit police, each revealing grisly details about the alleged murder.
The hearing was adjourned to April 7.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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