Document 6601642

Gulf Daily News
Monday, 17th November 2014
Email: [email protected]
5
n Shaikha Hessa Girls’ School was awarded Unconditional Joint Accreditation by the Council of International Schools/Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools (CIS/MSA) during an
event yesterday at the school’s campus in Riffa. It was attended by school chairman and Education Ministry Human Resources and Services Under-Secretary Shaikh Hisham bin Abdulaziz Al
Khalifa, CIS regional accreditation officer Dr Lesley Stagg, MSA accreditation officer Jacqueline Gilbert, ministry representatives, teachers, parents and students. Above, Shaikh Hisham speaking
at the ceremony. Right, guests at the event.
Arms trial begins
EIGHT men, including a
former Bahraini police lieutenant, convicted of fraud
appeared in court for the
first time yesterday to plead
not guilty to possessing
unlicensed firearms.
The officer, who was sentenced to three years by the Lower Criminal Court on October 23,
is among defendants standing
trial for illegal possession of AK47 rifles, pistols, shotguns and
ammunition.
He is also accused of smuggling the illegal firearms into the
country, which he denies.
A judge had to order the former lieutenant to sit with his
co-defendants in the dock during
yesterday’s hearing, after he initially sat outside the glass barrier.
“Why are you sitting outside
the dock, you have been jailed,”
the High Criminal Court judge
overseeing the trial told him.
“You will not be treated any
differently to any of the other inmates.”
The judge also ordered him
to speak quietly when the defendant raised his voice to enter
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a not guilty plea.
“Your voice should be quieter than my voice, don’t raise it
when I speak to you,” the judge
told him.
One of the defendants, who
was the former lieutenant’s personal bodyguard, earlier told
prosecutors that he saw 60 firearms in a vehicle belonging to
one of his co-defendants.
“He (the former police lieutenant) would have a lot of people approach him to sell him guns
during the unrest,” the bodyguard, a former BDF officer, told
prosecutors in his statement.
Fraud
“He always had weapons in his
car and I thought it was licensed
because of his job.
“I was his personal guard and
he paid me BD440 a month.
“He told me to grab a box from
his vehicle and I saw it was full of
ammunition.
“I also saw an MP5 (sub-machine gun) and a shotgun in the
car, in addition to other pistols in
another car.
“Another man came to him
and I saw he had 60 firearms in
his vehicle.”
An investigator told prosecutors that the former police lieutenant smuggled weapons into
the country, stashed them at his
home and handed them over to
the rest of the defendants.
“He (the former lieutenant) received illegal weapons, which he
smuggled into the country,” said
the 23-year-old policeman in his
statement.
“He then hid them at his home
and gave them to the rest of the
suspects along with tear gas canisters.”
The weapons confiscated included a 35.5mm rifle and 9mm,
8mm, 5.5mm and 4.5mm pistols.
The weapons trial was yesterday adjourned until December 12
to appoint lawyers for some of
the defendants.
The former police lieutenant
was earlier found guilty of reneging on a business deal after he
persuaded a foreign company to
pay him BD1.25 million to be a
partner in a poultry firm.
He had pledged to invest more
than BD10m in the company’s
capital, but did not honour his
commitment. The poultry company was never launched and the
defendant withdrew the amount
deposited by the foreign firm and
spent the cash on himself.
However, he denied the allegations and maintained he used
the money for the new company,
contrary to evidence collected.
He was earlier acquitted by
the same court in connection
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with a second fraud case, but is
also standing trial separately for
allegedly posting a defamatory
video online that was offensive to
members of the Shi’ite sect.
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