Cop killers lose final plea against death penalty

TDT | Manama

Two Bahraini men on death row had their final appeals rejected by the Court of Cassation yesterday. Both men were earlier convicted of killing on-duty policeman Abdulwahed Sayyed Mohammed Faqeer in a terrorist attack that occurred in the Muharraq Governorate in 2014. This was confirmed by Advocate General Chancellor Haroon Al Zayani in a press statement issued yesterday by the Public Prosecution.

Al Zayani explained in the statement that the appellants were also convicted on the charges of attempting to murder policemen with premeditation by carrying out a deadly ambush using explosives in Al Dair village six years ago. The court’s decision yesterday came six months after the Supreme Court of Appeal upheld the same punishment against both men.

Their trial in January this year came as a result of a decision taken last year by the Court of Cassation, which ordered the retrial of the appellants. According to court files, both men are implicated in a bomb blast that killed the policeman and injured five others.

The appellants—Mohammed Ramadan Hussain, a former corporals head at Bahrain International Airport (BIA), and Hussain Moussa Mohammed, a former hotel employee—received capital punishment after they were convicted of premeditated murder, attempted murder, detonating and possessing an explosive device, participating in an illegal gathering, and possessing Molotov cocktails.

Seven other men were embroiled in the same case and they were each given six years of imprisonment. The Court of Cassation previously rejected the appeals filed by both men, but it accepted the Public Prosecution’s request to re-try them before the Supreme Court of Appeal, after the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) in the prosecution shared with prosecutors new medical reports prepared by Ministry of Interior coroners.

The attack, which was carried out on February 14, 2014, a few kilometres to the north of BIA, had caused fatal chest injuries to the policeman, who was 29 years old at that time, which led to his demise at the hospital.

As reported earlier, a statement issued by the Public Prosecution mentioned: “The SIU submitted a memorandum to the Public Prosecution regarding its investigations in both complaints lodged by [the defendants], who were sentenced to death for killing a policeman and attempted murder of several other policemen by detonating a terrorist bomb blast.

“The SIU in its memorandum suggested the possibility of the reconsideration of the sentence against the convicts on the basis of new reports which came out in the course of its investigation and which were neither submitted to the two degrees of litigation courts nor submitted to the Cassation Court.

“The verdict was based on various evidences other than the evidence derived from the defendants’ statements, including technical evidences that the suspects exchanged mobile text messages indicating that they agreed and coordinated with each other to commit the crime.”