A man, who carried out an acid attack against his uncle’s former wife causing her ‘irreversible disfigurement’, has been found fit to stand trial by a panel of psychiatrists, the court heard yesterday.
The 28-year-old driver earlier admitted to splashing drain cleaning liquid containing sulphuric acid on the 37-year-old victim in front of her two daughters, targeting her in the car park of a popular mall in Manama.
A Government Hospitals medical commission, made up of three consultant psychiatrists, diagnosed the Bahraini with substance abuse disorder, but found that he was in full possession of his faculties.
“The defendant abuses stimulants and methamphetamine (shabu), but he does not have a mental illness that would render him not responsible for his actions or unable to answer for them,” the report read.
Despite maintaining for the entirety of the trial that he was coerced by his 41-year-old uncle to attack the woman, the man retracted the accusations in a letter submitted to judges yesterday.
In the hand-written letter, he claimed to have been made to confess against his co-defendant, and said that all his statements condemning him were not true.
He also told judges yesterday that “she’s OK now” even though medical experts recently evaluated her condition and described her injuries as a ‘60 per cent disability’.
This change in story does not seem to be in line with his defence team’s strategy, as they had reiterated earlier claims which placed all of the blame on the uncle, in the same hearing.
“The uncle forced his nephew to execute the crime, as he is autistic and is easily manipulated,” one of his attorneys told judges yesterday. “He simply used our client as a proxy to achieve his aims by threatening him with violence.
“He would force the defendant to consume drugs, so he would not be in his senses. As we all know, being under the influence of a substance exempts one from criminal liability.”
The GDN earlier reported that the 37-year-old victim has suffered extensive chemical burns on her face, neck, arm and thighs, along with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after the horrifying incident.
The court heard in previous sessions that her former husband had threatened to kill her many times over the years, and even told her he would ‘melt her face off’, but she did not take his threats seriously.
The victim told the prosecution that everything went wrong in their marriage when her then-husband got hooked on methamphetamine, which eventually led to her asking the Sharia court to grant her a divorce.
The Bahraini man had previously been sentenced to six months in prison by the Lower Criminal Court for stalking his ex-wife, repeatedly harassing her and attaching a GPS tracker to her car.
Though he was in Kuwait at the time of the attack, the ex-husband was extradited back to Bahrain, and has denied any involvement in the attack.
According to court documents, the victim had parked her car shortly before the assault, when her two daughters aged nine and 11 noticed a masked individual approaching, and immediately alerted their mother.
The suspect rushed toward her carrying a plastic container, the court heard, then the opened the lid and threw the liquid – which was later confirmed to be sulphuric acid – on her face and clothing.
During the investigations, police recovered a mask and a cap from the scene, from which DNA samples were taken that matched the accused, and he was tracked down and apprehended based on security footage.
Sulphuric acid is highly corrosive to human tissue, fabric and even metals and rocks, and any exposure to a concentrated version leads to severe chemical burns.
Heat from sulphuric acid’s interaction with carbohydrates produces heat, which can cause secondary thermal burns.
Judges announced February 25 as the day a verdict will be issued in the case.
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