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A debt-ridden man who was found guilty of forging court verdicts and orders in an attempt to trick his uncle into lending him money, has lodged an appeal against his conviction.
Last month, the High Criminal Court sentenced him to a year behind bars for committing forgery by looking up Bahraini court orders on the Internet and altering them for his own ends.
The court heard that the 62-year-old uncle had loaned the 30-year-old Bahraini appellant BD25,000 in the past, and that the latter reached out again for help, asking for BD3,000 more.
He claimed to have BD91,000 in frozen funds that were soon to be released and he promised to give his uncle 40 per cent.
The uncle insisted of seeing proof and the appellant ‘bought some time’ by producing faked documents, the court heard, consisting of 16 court verdicts and Public Prosecution rulings.
“No harm - neither real nor expected - was inflicted by the appellant’s actions,” the man’s attorney alleged in a defence memorandum. “For a crime to have happened, harm has to have occurred.
“To start off, the appellant unequivocally denied the accusations, as he had not committed any forgery or harboured criminal intent, nor presented the papers to the authorities that supposedly issued them.
“He didn’t use any kind of fraudulent means to get his uncle to lend him money. He had handed the money to him of his own voilition and before any documents were sent to him.
“His confession needs to be thrown out due to the emotional and psychological pressure he was put under when he was arrested at the airport, upon arriving in Bahrain.
“He didn’t know exactly what the accusations against him were, as he wasn’t informed, which makes his testimony unreliable.”
The GDN earlier reported that the appellant was convicted of three charges, including forgery, using a falsified document with knowledge of it being faked, and receiving funds through deception.
He claimed that BD91,000 of his money was held in escrow and that the papers he doctored were to ‘prove’ to his uncle that he had much to his name in an account.
An escrow account is a temporary, third-party held account that secures funds or assets during a transaction until both parties fulfill their contractual obligations, ensuring safety and trust in the exchange.
The court heard that the suspect downloaded genuine documents from a government portal and altered them on a text processing software, then printed copies of them to hand to his uncle.
“The papers, which the appellant looked up online, began with ‘To whom it may concern…’ and he added the rest of the text, and they included official logos, stamps and signatures,” read a original verdict.
The 62-year-old uncle appeared before the court and formally withdrew his complaint against his nephew, but the withdrawal was not taken into consideration since the trial had already begun when he submitted it.
According to the prosecution, the appellant admitted to the allegations and stated that all the documents given to his uncle were fake.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
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