Four men, sentenced to life in prison for murdering a fellow Jaw Prison inmate, are standing trial for allegedly beating up cellmates.
Though the alleged incident took place in June 2022, more than a year before the October 2023 murder, the case was only brought before the High Criminal Court last month.
The four Bahraini inmates, aged 26, 30, 39 and 49, and their new co-defendant aged 27, have been charged with assaulting three prisoners in their ward.
They were also charged with allegedly leaving one of the inmates with a 10pc disability after suffering ‘multiple fractures in the jaw and face’ at their hands and losing five teeth.
According to a medical report, the alleged victim had to undergo several major surgeries in the aftermath of the attack, but still suffers from chronic pain as his jaws no longer line up.
In 2022, doctors managed to stabilise his facial fractures and only removed the screws and plates holding together the man’s broken bones in 2024. He also had to receive dental implants to replace his missing teeth.
“I arrived at the scene of the crime after being notified about a fight in a cell,” a prison guard who witnessed the alleged fight told prosecutors.
“I saw a number of inmates close the door of the phone room, where the victim lay on the floor.”
The third defendant’s lawyer, who represented him in the murder trial, claimed that his client did not take part in the assault.
The veteran attorney questioned how a medical report issued in 2024 was used to accuse the defendants, when the alleged battering took place in 2022.
“Who knows if the injuries were a result of another incident if the report was written so long after the episode?” he asked judges.
However, the medical report appears to be an update of a previous report written shortly after the attack and provides information on the victim’s now-permanent disability.
The 2022 report documented the state of the man’s injuries then, and the procedures he underwent up to two months after the incident, while the new document shows that the man is still suffering from the consequences of the alleged assault.
The GDN previously reported the entirety of the Jaw Prison murder trial, in which four of the five defendants were found guilty of killing inmate Yousif Al Khalasi and were sentenced to 25 years behind bars.
Mr Al Khalasi, 22, was beaten to death after ‘a fight over fruit juice’, which broke out in their ward’s TV room.
The four men reportedly kept on kicking and punching him long after he lost consciousness or the ability to defend himself, which the Public Prosecution described as a ‘heinous crime’.
All four denied charges of premeditated murder, though the attack was caught by security cameras, and witnesses testified to seeing them drenched in the victim’s blood.
The verdict refers to the defendants as ‘repeat offenders’, which in Bahraini law is an aggravating circumstance.
Despite lawyers’ arguments that the attack was provoked, judges stated that there was no mitigating circumstance in the case and that there was no need to use mercy in the ruling.
Judges adjourned the trial to January 28, when a verdict will be issued. It is not known why the case took two-and-a-half years to be brought to trial.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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