A Coastguard officer and two sailors are on trial for their alleged involvement in the manslaughter of a Bahraini man who fell overboard into the sea after a high seas collision.
The victim and crew members were accused of practising illegal trawling activities under the cover of night in an area named Ghumais, near Fasht Al Adhem, located on the Qatar-Bahrain maritime border, when the tragedy took place.
The body of Abdulla Hasan Al Shraimi was found by Qatari authorities almost two weeks after the October 20 incident, and was identified by his family before being repatriated to Bahrain.
The Coastguard captain, with the official rank of ‘Noukhada’, denies accusations of recklessly driving the police boat into the vessel that the victim and other suspects were on, causing a collision that made two of the boat’s four passengers fall off it.
The 34-year-old Bahraini defendant has been further charged with neglect which led to the victim’s death, as he failed to attempt to rescue the man from drowning, instead opting to go on a 45-minute-long high seas pursuit of the vessel, an accusation he also denies.
At the High Criminal Court yesterday he denied charges of accelerating at an inappropriate speed toward the other boat and of disregarding marine safety rules.
The late Mr Al Shraimi, a 39-year-old father-of-two, was the other ship’s captain. The Public Prosecution heard witness accounts that the Coastguard vessel had hit him directly during the impact.
The two sailors, aged 25 and 27, were also charged with neglect and complicity in their friend’s death. They were charged with preventing public security officers from performing their duties, by not complying with orders to surrender to the authorities.
They were charged with possessing prohibited trawling nets while in a fishing area on a fishing vessel, and of using the environmentally-destructive fishing method known as trawling.
The 27-year-old defendant was accused of driving a boat, named the Khair Abu Yusuf without a valid permit, violating marine safety laws by sailing with the headlights turned off and without enabling the vessel’s automatic identification system (AIS).
The 25-year-old defendant, the boat’s owner, was charged with not fitting the vessel with mandatory safety equipment, including a fire extinguisher, life jackets and first aid kit.
A 15-year-old passenger, who was with them at the time, was initially a suspect but is now not facing any criminal charges.
“It was 4pm when we set out from Karzakan on the Khair Abu Yusuf,” the boat’s owner earlier testified. “It was captained by the victim. We went to Ghumais to catch shrimp.
“We covered the boat’s name and registration number with paper, since we were doing something illegal, so we wouldn’t be spotted or approached by the Coastguard.
“At night, a patrol vessel approached us at a tremendous speed and hit us, and both me and the captain fell off. I was rescued, but we couldn’t see the victim. I believe that the boat hit him directly.”
In prosecution interviews, the Coastguard crew claimed they thought only one sailor had fallen into the sea and had scrambled back onboard with help from his friends.
A Coastguard sailor, who was with the accused Noukhada, testified to the Public Prosecution, providing the Interior Ministry’s official account of that fateful night.
“I was on patrol with the Captain and another sailor at 9am,” the 19-year-old Bahraini officer said. “We were patrolling the southern area of Bahrain’s waters.
“A vessel was found on radar on the Qatari border. We went there to investigate and saw three people trawling. They attempted to cut the nets loose to hide what they were doing.
“Their boat hit the left side of our boat, and a person fell from theirs. They helped him up then fled the scene. We chased them for 45 minutes until they stopped.
“We asked one of them to board our vessel and he told us that there was a missing person.”
The first defendant, the Noukhada, testified that he and his crew went to look for the missing man but could not find him.
A Noukhada is an official Interior Ministry rank, denoting a Coastguard captain, but the term historically referred to the captain of a traditional dhow – a ship sailing on pearling expeditions or for trade.
Why the Khair Abu Yusuf fled the scene was explained by one of the sailors. “We felt like the Coastguard would hit us again, so I took over the steering and tried to flee,” he testified.“There was a chase and I asked them not to hit us.”
On November 2, Qatari authorities retrieved the late Mr Al Shraimi’s body from the sea and his family travelled to Qatar, accompanied by a Bahraini public security officer, to identify him.
An autopsy conducted in Bahrain revealed a tragic and shocking account of the 39-year-old’s final moments.
“There was a significant amount of tissue lost in his head and neck – a big section of his skull was missing, along with a number of teeth,” the coroner stated. “The head injury in itself could have killed him without medical attention but he was drowning.”
An examination of the body confirmed the fellow sailors’ account about the collision impacting him.
The deceased was buried in his hometown of Shahrakkan, with people from all across Bahrain attending his funeral.
The hearing was adjourned to March 3.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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