Page 338 - Bahrain Gov Annual Reports (IV)_Neat

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Prisoners.—During (he year 186 prisoners were received and 188 were discharged, one
prisoner died. At the end of the year (here were 55 prisoners in custody. The number of persons who
arc sentenced to imprisonment is very small in comparison to the population of the country, which
is iio.ooo. Considering the number of Bahrain subjects and the number of foreigners it appears that
the proportion of foreigners who are involved in crime is considerably greater than the proportion
of Bahrain Arabs. The people of Bahrain are naturally peaceful and law abiding.
Crime.—The following statement shows the number and type of crimes which have l>ecn
dealt with by the Police during the last ten years. The figures show no striking fluctuations; they
do not include traffic offences which have grown with the increase of traffic on the roads. Most of
the cases occurred in Manamah where there is a cosmopolitan population; criminal offences in the
villages, which arc very closely knit communities, are very rare. This list of offences includes many
trivial complaints, such as petty thefts and domestic quarrels. Crime in Bahrain is to a certain
extent seasonal, there is more in the summer than in the winter and there arc more quarrels during
the month of Ramadhan than in olht-r months. An explanation of this phenomenon is that in the
summer, especially when Ramadhan occurs in the hot weather, peoples’ tempers are frayed and they
arc liable to quarrel, also during the summer most householders sleep outside and leave their rooms
partly unprotected.
As usual in 1370 cases of theft predominated ; there was one case of murder, two serious assaults
and several important thefts, liquor cases were again on the increase, the table shows cases over the
last 10 years—which has been made up-to-date by adding 1370 figures.
The murder case, was sub judicc at the end of the year. The victim was ITanna Numaan,
an Iraqi Christian goldsmith, a man of notorious reputation who came to Bahrain many years ago
having fled from Iraq to escape from the family of a girl whom he had seduced. His brother, Georges,
was frequently in jail in Bahrain and was eventually deported.

On 15th Rajab it was reported to the Police that Hanna's office had been left open and he,
apparently, had disappeared. All his belongings in his house appeared to be intact together with
his passport and some new luggage from which the Police inferred that he might be going away.
Exhaustive enquiries both in Bahrain and in Iraq produced no results.
On iSth Shabaan one of His Highness’s herdsmen found a partly buried body close to the old
Sitra Road, it seemed to have been uncovered by pariah dogs. It was established, mainly from dental
evidence, that the body was that of Hanna Numaan.
Shortly before the body was found a Bahrain subject, Abdulla bin Abdul Latif, who had spent
a good part of his life in and out of jail, came to Police and informed them that he had seen and con­
versed with Hanna in Baghdad a short time previously. He himself had gone to Baghdad, with the
wife of another bad character Abdul Husain Saa’chi, on the day after Hanna’s disappearance was
reported. Abdul Husain had followed his wife and Abdulla to Iraq a few days later.
When Hanna’s body was found Abdulla was arrested. He made a statement implicating Abdul
Husain, who lived with him, and a number of other people who, he stated, were present in a room
in his house when after drinking a quarrel took place and Hanna was killed. Abdul Husain was
arrested on his return from Iraq, he too made a statement implicating other persons. Eventually
seven persons were charged, including two prostitutes, a taxi driver who, it was claimed, had conveyed
some of the party, with Hanna’s body, out to the desert and one Khalil Dchncem, a procurer and liquor
peddler.
There was an attempted suicide by a boy of ten who swallowed rat poison because, as he said,
he had no parents and wanted to die. Prompt action at the Government Hospital saved his life, he
was placed under probation.

A case of robbery with violence look place in a house in Manamah; a thief attacked the owner
of the house which he was robbing and slabbed him in a number of places. The culprit was not caught.