Stabbing : Court considers mental health report

The First High Criminal Court will today consider a mental health review of a Bahraini man who stabbed his neighbour over a parking spot dispute earlier this year. Public prosecution charged him with attempted murder, escaping and leaving the victim in a puddle of blood. The psychiatry report says the defendant does not suffer from any organic diseases or auditory hallucinations, but has slight mental retardation and is incapable of judging complex or less intense matters.

Investigations also revealed that the suspect was undergoing treatment for his conditions from a Psychiatry Hospital since 2011, but he failed to do followups regularly. According to court files, the suspect stabbed the victim several times, before fleeing from the crime scene. The incident leading to the case occurred on 12 February 2019 in Galali, close to Bahrain International Airport. The victim, according to Public prosecution, was stabbed using a kitchen knife, said Chief Prosecutor Adnan Fakhro.

The prosecution was notified of the crime by Samaheej Police station. The timely intervention of the police led to shifting the victim quickly to a hospital, where he recovered. In a statement, issued a day after the incident, the Chief Prosecutor said: “The prosecution interrogated the suspect and heard his statements, before ordering his detention until the date of the trial.”

In doing so, the prosecution inspected the crime scene, heard testimonies of the victim and eyewitnesses and assigned a coroner to examine the victim and the knife used to commit the crime. Investigators came to the conclusion that the accused stabbed the victim with a premeditated intention to kill. He kept the knife ready with him and monitored the victim’s movements closely. “He stabbed the victim several times, which led him falling on the ground.

The accused then continued to stab him to ensure his death and later fled the scene,” Fakhro added. The suspect denied the accusations levelled against him and claimed that it was the victim who attacked and threatened him using a knife, following which a fistfight broke out. Eyewitness, however, informed prosecutors that they saw the suspect stabbing the victim while the latter was on the floor.

The witness also informed that the suspect fled the scene and left the victim bleeding on the floor. On July 9, the court ordered to conduct a mental evaluation of the suspect to determine, if he was responsible for his actions.