A member of Bahrain’s parliament has demanded the deportation of more than 100,000 Bangladeshi labourers from the Gulf state after one expat from the Asian country was charged with the gruesome murder of a national.
Abdul Halim Murad on Sunday called on the government to “put a timetable for the deportation of Bangladeshi labourers from Bahrain after their repeated involvement in murders and other crimes”, according to a report in Arabic daily Akhbar Al-Khaleej.
Murad, a member of the hardline Salafi bloc, also called for the execution of the accused man “quickly so that justice will be done”, according to newswire AFP.
Saif Al Islam, the Bangladeshi charge d’affaires, countered Murad’s position, saying that it would be unfair to punish the entire Bangladeshi community for the actions of one person.
“We told the Bahraini authorities to put this Bangladeshi national on trial and punish him if he is convicted,” Islam said.
“But I hope the 106,000 Bangladeshis working in various sectors will not all be punished if one man did something wrong.”
The accused, a mechanic, was charged with premeditated murder on Friday after he was accused of slitting a Bahraini man’s throat with a hacksaw following a disagreement over payment for work on the victim’s car.
Although Bahrain applies the death penalty, executions are seldom carried out.
Bahrain executed two Bangladeshi workers in December 2006 after the king upheld their death sentences. They were the first executions to be carried out in the Gulf state since 1996.
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