Manama: The man who shot dead a senior Kuwaiti shaikh and two other people had reportedly bought the gun from a traffic policeman.
Kuwait was shocked on Friday following news that two Iranians had conspired to kill Shaikh Sabah Mubarak Al Sabah Al Nasser Al Sabah, 58, as well as another Kuwaiti national, 68, and an Indonesian woman in a flat in Salwa, around 13 kilometres south of the capital Kuwait City.
The two assailants also shot an Indian national, who survived by playing the dead. He later alerted the authorities to the triple murders.
They fled the scene after stealing KD276,000 ($904,918.03) and three guns that belonged to the flat owner, the interior ministry said in a statement.
The murderers were arrested and confessed to the crimes.
“During the questioning, the investigators pressed to know how they obtained the gun used to kill the three victims,” a security source told Kuwaiti daily Al Rai.
“One of them eventually confessed that he had bought it from a traffic policeman for 800 Kuwaiti Dinars."
The investigators then arrested the policeman, who admitted he had sold the gun, the report said. The policeman told investigators he personally did not know the murderer, and that a colleague was the middle man in the transaction.
The policeman said that his colleague introduced him to the Iranian and that they agreed on the price for the gun.
A few hours later, the seller and buyer met in a public place where the money and gun were discreetly exchanged, Al Rai reported on Tuesday.
“The investigators headed to the house of the second policeman and detained him. He readily admitted his role in the transaction, but insisted that he did not know that the gun would be used to commit a crime,” the source said.
The two policemen were referred to the public prosecution pending further investigations.
