Five prisoners, four of whom were recently sentenced to 25 years in prison after being found guilty of murdering a fellow inmate, have been sentenced to three more years in prison for assaulting a number of inmates.
The High Criminal Court found the four Bahrainis – aged 26, 30, 39 and 49 – and a 27-year-old co-defendant guilty of beating up three men who share their ward in Jaw Prison.
They were also convicted of leaving one of the inmates with a 10 per cent disability after suffering ‘multiple fractures in the jaw and face’ and losing five teeth.
According to a medical report, the victim had to undergo several major surgeries in the aftermath of the attack, but still suffers from chronic pain as his jaws are misaligned.
Though the incident took place in June 2022, more than a year before the October 2023 murder, the case was only brought before the court last month.
In 2022, doctors managed to stabilise his facial fractures and only removed the screws and plates holding together the man’s broken bones last year. He also had to receive dental implants to replace his missing teeth.
A medical report issued two months after the incident documented the state of his injuries and the procedures he underwent, but a new report issued last month showed that he still suffered from the after-effects of the assault.
A prison guard who witnessed the fight gave his account of the assault to prosecutors, stating that he saw inmates close the door of the phone room “where the victim lay on the floor”.
The third defendant’s lawyer, who also 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 battering took place in 2022, alleging that the injuries could have been the result of another incident.
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.
They were sentenced to 25 years behind bars, to which three extra years were added after this verdict.
Mr Al Khalasi, aged 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 the five defendants denied charges of premeditated murder, though the attack was caught by security cameras, and witnesses testified to seeing the accused drenched in the victim’s blood.
The verdict refers to the defendants as ‘repeat offenders’, which in Bahraini law is an aggravating circumstance and leads to longer sentences.
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.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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