THREE more Kuwaitis have appeared at the High Criminal Court to deny charges of fraud over Covid-19 tests.
The men, aged 21, claimed they were duped by an expatriate man.
They were arrested on September 17 by Saudi authorities while travelling to Kuwait via King Fahad Causeway.
Customs officers scanned the QR code on their RT-PCR reports and found that the documents were fake. The men were handed over to Bahraini authorities.
However, the defendants have said that an Egyptian man – who claimed to be a Health Ministry employee – tricked them by offering to take nasal swabs for BD10 each.
“What we are accused of is not true,” one of them told prosecutors.
“My friends (co-defendants) and I came to Bahrain for sight-seeing and we were staying in a hotel at Exhibition Avenue.
“We met a man at a traffic signal who told us to go to the Bahrain International Airport for a PCR test.
“However, an Egyptian man met us outside the airport and said he would come to our hotel for the nasal swab.
“Hours later, we received the report on the mobile phone.
“We never thought we would be tricked because we scanned the QR code before deciding to leave the country.
“We were later arrested and told that the PCR test had been forged.”
This is the third time in less than 10 days that people accused of faking their Covid-19 test results have pinned their blame on an unknown expatriate.
The GDN previously reported that a 21-year-old Kuwaiti university student and two Bahraini women, aged 22 and 30, are also standing trial at the High Criminal Court in connection with a similar incident. The trio, arrested on September 9, had claimed that they were conned by an expatriate man and a woman who posed as a nurse.
Three more Kuwaitis, aged 19, 20 and 21, were arrested on the same day for allegedly using fake documents to travel to Kuwait via King Fahad Causeway. The men were arrested by Saudi authorities after customs officers scanned the QR code on their RT-PCR reports.
All three cases have been adjourned until Wednesday for review.
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