DEFENCE lawyers will submit their final arguments next Tuesday in the appeal of seven men convicted of abducting a policeman during last year's unrest.

During yesterday's hearing at the Supreme Criminal Appeals Court, the defendants' relatives provided alibis and claimed the accused had been with them at the time of the crime.

Meanwhile, fellow inmates appeared as witnesses and claimed to have seen the defendants being mistreated in custody.

"I saw one of the defendants being hit with a plastic pipe in a police building in Adliya, while I also heard another being mistreated in custody," said one inmate who appeared as a witness.

The seven men were jailed for a combined total of 105 years.

It is claimed the victim was held captive in an abandoned building and at the home of two of the defendants in Bilad Al Qadeem.

The officer eventually escaped through the window of a room where he was being held and down a drainpipe.

The suspects include clergyman Mohammed Habib Al Saffaf, also known as Al Meqdad, who has been jailed for 96 years in connection with several cases connected to the unrest.