.jpg?20260315')
A DEFENCE lawyer has claimed that a mother accused of torturing her children was only ‘disciplining’ them, a court heard, warranting disbelief from a leading judge.
The female lawyer submitted her final arguments yesterday at the High Criminal Court in the trial of a 29-year-old Bahraini woman and her teenage lover who allegedly brutally assaulted her four children.
Her 18-year-old Bahraini boyfriend, who the court heard provided free food to her children following their father’s death, is alleged to have tortured them too. The youngest child was left crippled for life from the injuries he suffered, the court heard earlier.
Both defendants have denied assault and causing a permanent disability.
“Your honour, my client was only teaching her children a lesson,” the defence lawyer, representing the mother, told a leading judge yesterday.
“She was just being a mother and she hit them to teach them what’s right from what’s wrong.”
This prompted a leading judge to question the lawyer. “Do you see this as disciplinary action?” he asked. “This is no way near disciplinary behaviour.”
The defendants are accused of having regularly beaten the children – two boys and two girls – whose ages range from 10 months to six years.
On June 14 the male defendant is accused of spinning the youngest child in the air because he would not stop crying.
The boy was taken to a private hospital in Manama with fractures to his head, hands and chest and placed on a life support machine by the medical team.
The defendants have pinned the blame on each other, while the mother insisted that her co-defendant attacked her baby because he was crying.
Her six-year-old son previously described the horrors of how his mother and boyfriend, who he called ‘uncle’, would torture him and his siblings on a daily basis.
The trial has been adjourned until October 25 for a ruling.
noorz@gdn.com.bh
&uuid=(email))