Law proposal on incest crimes denied by panel

Manama : MPs have rejected a law proposal that introduces a set of punishments to incest crimes recently. The proposal was submitted to the council by the Shura Council.

The rejection comes as Foreign Affairs, Defence and National Security Parliamentary committee claimed that “the proposal contains many legislative gaps as mentioned in the replies of the concerned authorities.”

The panel mentioned in a report that will be openly discussed during the next Parliament weekly meeting on Tuesday that it consulted the council’s Legislative and Legal Affairs Committee, Interior Ministry, Labour and Social Development Ministry, Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs and the Supreme Council for Women.

All the panel members had one common point in their reply, stating that the law proposal didn’t specify the categories considered as incest crime victims.

Majority of committee members, who rejected the proposal, said in their report that the punishments introduced in the proposal (5 – 7 years of imprisonment) is not consistent with the gravity of the crime.

The feedback of Labour and Social Development stated that the crime does exist in the society, but it isn’t a common crime that requires a separate legislation.

Another reason for rejecting the proposal, as mentioned by the committee, is that the crime is included within Articles 345 and 346 of the existing Penal Code.

The committee’s legal consultant advised that the proposal is approved from a constitutional aspect, but he added that the crime is not common to set a separate legislation for it.

The committee also mentioned that seven years of imprisonment is a lenient punishment for the crime, adding that countries like Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and Sudan are applying hard punishments on incest crimes that reach death penalties.