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A lawyer, who was assigned by the Justice Ministry to defend a man accused of murdering his bully-boy son, has withdrawn from the case, a court heard.
At the trial’s first hearing, the expatriate blacksmith confessed to slitting his 34-year-old child’s throat with a knife over a dispute related to the son’s alleged drug addiction, but stated that he did not intend to kill him.
In the next hearing, the attorney assigned requested that he be withdrawn from the case, stating that he and his team did not feel that they could provide a sufficient defence for the accused 63-year-old Pakistani.
“We have read the case’s documents and carefully examined its details, and we have found that we cannot represent the defendant adequately,” a letter addressed to the High Criminal Court read.
“It is due to the weight of the accusation – an intentional murder charge – that we request that you approve our withdrawal from the case and accept our apologies.”
A month after the lawyer requested his resignation, the court accepted it and adjourned the hearing until a new lawyer could be assigned.
In criminal trials, the Justice, Islamic Affairs and Endowments Ministry picks a lawyer from a roster to act as a public defender for suspects who do not have one.
The GDN previously reported that the father had initially admitted to pre-meditated murder charges in court and recalled a long history of disputes with his 34-year-old son.
Despite the father’s claims that his son abused drugs, the medical examiner’s report read that the victim’s blood tested negative for alkaloids, brain-altering narcotics and alcohol.
According to the autopsy, the cut at the victim’s throat was so deep that it reached the spine, and added that the throat was slit ‘over and over again’ to achieve the fatal wound.
The defendant confessed to prosecutors that he immobilised his son by tying his wrists and feet together with a ghitrah.
After carrying out the deadly deed, the court heard that he called the police. Officers arrived and found him dressed in ‘blood-stained clothes’ while his son’s body lay lifeless on the floor of their shared Naim apartment.
Several witnesses, including the man’s roommate and the shopkeeper at a cold store near Naim, testified that the son behaved erratically and was often violent towards his father, both verbally and physically.
His roommate told prosecutors that the victim had been in a rehabilitation facility in Pakistan before he came to Bahrain to join his father and take up an occupation here.
The labourer stated that the son would ‘stir up trouble constantly’, hit his dad and ‘say awful things to him’, and that they had been fighting on the day of the incident.
Meanwhile, a police officer recounted arriving at the crime scene and hearing first-hand the defendant’s initial confession to the killing, a story which the Pakistani maintained throughout his questioning.
Judges adjourned the hearing to February 9 when a new public defender will be appointed.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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