A villain who coerced a young woman struggling with heroin addiction into becoming a drug dealer under him has been sentenced, in absentia, to life in prison and fined BD5,000 for selling the opioid.
The 26-year-old Lebanese salesman is no longer in Bahrain after being deported over another criminal case several months ago.
The 20-year-old Bahraini girl, and her 27-year-old boyfriend, had been accused of selling heroin alongside the expatriate.
Yesterday, the High Criminal Court ruled to acquit the woman of the selling charges because she had informed on the man who had recruited her. However, the young woman, who became homeless after her mother kicked her out of her home over her drug addiction, was sentenced to three years in prison for possessing an assortment of narcotics for personal use.
She was convicted of being in possession of pregabalin (Lyrica), morphine, meth, heroin and alprazolam (Xanax), and was fined BD1,000.
Her boyfriend, a Bahraini restaurant worker, was sentenced to five years in prison and fined BD5,000 for his role in the case.
The GDN earlier reported the woman had pleaded with judges for a second chance. “I just want to be with my mother and go to rehab,” she told the court.
The court heard that she had started taking drugs with her boyfriend, and that the couple bought them from Pakistani dealers via dead drops.
“In June, my mum threw me out of our home because she believed that I returned to using drugs. I slipped further back into old habits,” she recounted.
“I rented a car, and I would drive my boyfriend to and from his job at a Lebanese restaurant. We were together all of the time, except when he was at work.”
She recounted that the Lebanese man, whom she knew through a former friend, contacted her about four to five days after she had been evicted from her home and offered her heroin.
After asking her a series of questions, he found out she was unemployed and still using drugs, but was unable to afford her next hit. “He told me he would give me heroin without payment,” she testified.
The estranged daughter did not know at the time that she was being set up by her supposed benefactor, who was entrapping her so she would have no choice but to join his ranks.
A week after that conversation, the couple went to a building in Riffa to pick up a concealed package with drugs in it, which also contained two sensitive scales, empty packaging (baggies), a burner phone and a charging cable.
After using the stash for a few days, she claimed that the Lebanese man told them they would need to sell heroin in exchange for the package, stating that ‘it was not free’.
To compensate the man for his ‘gift’, she began packing and fulfilling orders for him, while her boyfriend dropped them off at designated locations to be later picked up by customers.
In a High Criminal Court hearing, the boyfriend took responsibility for the drug dealing, declaring before judges that his girlfriend was uninvolved and asserting her innocence.
The two had been arrested after she was forced to leave her home, and began sleeping in a rental car with her boyfriend.
One night in June, the Bahraini couple were spotted in the parking lot of a shopping centre in Saar. A police officer woke them with knocks on the vehicle’s window and noted that they appeared to be in an impaired state. Suspecting narcotics use, the officer arrested them. A subsequent search of the vehicle revealed narcotics.
The court was informed that the Lebanese man had been deported following a criminal case, months before this trial commenced.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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