Manama: A criminal court on Sunday cited lack of evidence in releasing two Bahrainis accused of attacking the managing editor of a local newspaper.
The two were arrested in August after Palestinian national Mohannad Abu Zeitoun, working for the Arabic-language Al Watan daily, was attacked on his way from office at around 3am.
The senior journalist was wounded and his car partially torched in the assault that was immediately condemned by journalists and activists as an attack on the press and on freedom of speech regardless of the paper’s leanings.
However, last month Abu Zeitoun told the court in the first hearing that the two defendants in front of him were around 155 centimetres tall whereas the ones who assaulted him in August were around 180 centimetres tall.
Earlier today, the accused pair’s lawyers asked for the case against them to be closed.
