Manama: A court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a man to death for shooting at a police patrol and learning how to blow up gas cylinders.
Other charges leveled against the man included “harbouring a wanted man for five days in his grandfather’s home and providing him with a machine gun, covering up for a group of riot inciters and failing to report them to the police, and purchasing three guns and ammunition,” the Saudi news agency and local dailies reported on Tuesday.
In pronouncing the verdict, the judge at the court in the Red Sea portal city of Jeddah said that the death sentence was a unanimous decision. He attributed the capital punishment to the “enormity of the defendant’s acts.”
The man, from the Qatif area in the kingdom’s Eastern Province, was arrested at Dammam airport as he was about to leave the kingdom for Iran, the daily said.
Saudi Arabia’s authorities have pledged a zero-tolerance policy towards attacks on men in uniform and supporting riots.
