Kangaroo courts
Wednesday, February 16, 2005What the hell is going on in Bahrain? From the GDN:
A Bahraini policeman has been convicted of having sex with his under-age sister-in-law. He denied the charge, but was convicted and sentenced to six months in jail, to be suspended if he pays a BD200 fine. The 17-year-old Iraqi girl alleged that he raped her twice after she invited him into her home while she was alone, the Lower Criminal Court heard. (Continued)
Compare the above punishments with those of another case reported in today's GDN:
A 20-year-old Bahraini man has been sentenced to six months in jail, suspended for three years, for possessing and using cannabis. He was also fined BD500, after being convicted at the Lower Criminal Court. (Continued)
I'm outraged, but sadly I'm not particularly surprised, for there have been plenty of similar ridiculous court rulings in the past few years. All the more reason to support the call to overhaul the judiciary. Hope and pray that you never have to face any of our judges.
And don't forget: Ahmed and others are still sitting in prison without trial.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, February 16, 2005 at 2/16/2005 01:16:00 am. Permalink
2/16/2005 01:59:00 pm
DIB,
Personally I'm not convinced that locking someone up is the best way to help a criminal become a better person... but that's another story.
My point in this post was to use the sentence for smoking hash as a benchmark to compare with the given sentence for rape. It seems a bit nonsensical to me that smoking hash would get a stiffer fine than rape.
On second reading of the article though, it seems that the policeman was only convicted of having sex with a minor, and not of rape. But the GDN article isn't entire clear about this.
But in any case, there seem to be no real guidelines about what crime deems what punishment... stealing a goat will get you in for 6 months as well.
Other opinions?