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An unemployed arsonist has lost his second attempt to contest a verdict in which he was found guilty of setting his neighbour’s garage door on fire, the court heard.
In December, the drug-addicted, middle-aged Bahraini man was sentenced to three years in prison by the High Criminal Court, and was ordered to pay his neighbour BD2,105 in damages.
He appealed the ruling at the Supreme Criminal Appeals Court in February, but judges upheld the sentence.
He lodged an objection against the appeal, but this time, it was completely dismissed.
“The court is treating this objection as if it was never made, since it was not made on a sound basis,” read the appeals court objection verdict.
Convicted on charges of arson and destruction of private property, the 42-year-old’s defence team tried to play the ‘insanity card’ in the initial appeal, but failed twice to change the court’s mind.
His lawyer claimed that the appellant has been receiving treatment at the Psychiatric Hospital since 1998, “as he suffers with mental instability,” and requested judges that he undergo a mental evaluation.
The man was declared fit to stand trial by a panel of consultant psychiatrists, who found he was addicted to drugs but was nevertheless free of psychological ailments.
Based on this, the Supreme Criminal Appeals Court upheld the guilty verdict. He lodged an objection, but judges declared it null, invalid and baseless.
The GDN earlier reported that, after viewing security camera footage which captured the arsonist in the act of pouring fuel on the garage and igniting it with a lighter, policemen swiftly tracked the man to his hiding place.
He had run off to a nearby apartment building, and when police came to arrest him, he appeared to be ‘in an intense rage’ and threatened officers that he would set them, too, on fire.
According to court documents, the house owner was not at home at the time of the incident, but received a phone call from a friend who spotted smoke coming from the direction of the property.
The 35-year-old Bahraini rushed back from work, and with his friend’s help, managed to put out the fire partially and keep it from spreading until firemen arrived and put out the flames.
A neighbour, who is an off-duty police officer, also joined the two in their efforts to stop the fire from spreading to other parts of the house, using water buckets.
The appellant was convicted of arson and property damage based on the video evidence, with a Civil Defence report stating that the fire was man-made.
Traces of fuel were furthermore found on his clothes, based on analysis conducted by the Interior Ministry’s forensics department.
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