A man, who allegedly set alight a man’s car after claiming that its owner had insulted his mother, had himself earlier been found guilty of beating up his mum, a court heard.
The motorcyclist earlier featured in a widely-circulated security camera video, capturing him in the act of starting the fire. He is now on trial at the High Criminal Court denying charges of arson and destruction of property.
The 38-year-old Bahraini defendant, however admitted to the accusations in Public Prosecution questioning, going so far as to narrate the moment he swore fiery revenge against the alleged victim, judges were told.
“The accusations against me are true – a day before the incident, I had an argument with my neighbour’s friend (victim),” he told prosecutors. “He was yelling at me that I’ve been disturbing him by the noise of my motorcycle and that I revved it up loudly on purpose, to irritate him.
“He called me names, so I pulled a metal rod from my bike and was going to hit him, but he ran away. I swore that if I saw his car again, I would burn it!
“I was on my way to my friend’s house and I saw it. I picked up a plastic bottle off the floor and siphoned some of the fuel from my motorcycle into it, then splashed it on his car and started a fire with a lighter.”
The Bahraini owner of the alleged torched vehicle gave his own account of the unfortunate June incident.
“I was in my home in Hamad Town when my mum woke me up to tell me that my Mitsubishi was in flames, and that I should help out my dad deal with the situation,” the victim told the Public Prosecution.
“I went outside, where I saw my father trying to put out the flames, so I brought a fire extinguisher in an effort to aid him.
“One of our neighbours came and brought a water hose with him to help us out too but it was to no avail. When we managed to calm the fire a little, it would come back stronger.
“Civil Defence finally arrived to extinguish the fire, and I checked our house’s security cameras, where I found footage of a person approaching our house on a motorbike, pouring fluid on the car and setting it aflame.”
The GDN earlier reported that sources tipped off investigators about the identity of the culprit, who at the time, was wearing a beige shirt, black pants and a maroon helmet.
Laboratory tests later confirmed that samples collected from the scene revealed that the liquid substance was highly-flammable petroleum.
Further investigations from the Civil Defence proved that the fire was started deliberately.
Less than two hours later, the defendant was arrested. He was interrogated, the court heard, and admitted to being the man in the video and for committing the crime ‘in retaliation’.
He was in conflict with the victim, who allegedly ‘insulted his mother’, and this set him on the fiery path of revenge.
The judge questioned the defendant on whether he was undergoing treatment for any psychological issues. The accused stated that he had in the past, but could not remember the name or nature of the illness that he suffered from.
The defendant’s criminal record, outlined in the prosecution’s case, revealed that he was once found guilty of physically assaulting his 58-year-old mother, and a court fined him for that.
zainab@gdnmedia.bh
&uuid=(email))