Desert Rednecks?

Now, being from Northwestern Ontario, I am very familiar with rednecks, and stories about rednecks doing stupid redneck things. I suppose one could say that this is a story of desert rednecks. It comes from the Gulf Times of Qatar .

Shepherd gets one year in jail over murder
By Nour Abuzant
Staff Reporter
A Doha court of first instance has sentenced a shepherd to a year’s imprisonment and ordered he be deported after serving the sentence for premeditated killing of a compatriot colleague, following a quarrel between them on who should ride the camel and a verbal dispute a day before the crime.
The family of the Sudanese victim had dropped their rights to blood money as well as any punishment and that can explain the “lenient” verdict that the accused got for such a serious crime, court sources told Gulf Times.
The victim was murdered on July 11, 2008 in the Shahaniya ranch where they worked. Both were in their early 20s.
According to the charge-sheet, “the accused hit the victim with an iron bar thrice in the head, back and chest.”
The court heard from witnesses that the victim cursed the defendant’s mother a day before the killing.
The defendant’s lawyer argued that his client attacked the victim ‘in a fit of rage’ and that the crime should be treated as beating to death and not premeditated murder.
However, the judge dismissed the claims, ruling that there was a time gap between the verbal dispute and the deadly assault on the next day.
The court added that the incident constituted a “classical case of premeditated murder.”
The court said that the suspect confessed to the charge during interrogations and told the police that the victim failed to apologise for his action (cursing) and that was the motivation for hitting him.
The judge ruled that the accused knew that hitting the victim with an iron bar on the sensitive parts might lead to death.
The judge said that he understood the anger of the accused on hearing someone cursing his mother, considering where he came from, “but the period between the dispute and the crime was enough to give the killer a chance to think calmly about the meaning of his action.”

Wow. Well, there you have it. I never knew that people could feel so passionate about riding a camel. I've seen plenty of camels in my time here, but haven't had an overly strong desire to ride any of them, let alone kill someone over wanting to ride one. Does that make me strange?