The former deputy leader of the opposition Al-Wefaq bloc, Sheikh Hassan Issa, was arrested in 2015 and sentenced to ten years behind bars in March of this year.
But Manama is continuing its ‘legal proceedings’ against the opposition leader despite allegations that his arrest, detention and prosecution “violated a number of rights and freedoms guaranteed under international law.”
Last month the Bahrain Forum for Human Rights (BFHR) published a detailed report on Sheikh Issa’s case concluding that the court proceedings against the accused lacked any international standards for a free and fair trial.
The report adds that the evidence gathered in the case is “vague and incomplete” leading to the conclusion that the “resulting procedures are invalid, whether they were the procedures of arrest or procedures of interrogations.”
Sheikh Issa was accused of “funding terrorism” in connection with a 2015 bombing in Sitra, which killed two Bahraini police officers. Out of the 24 defendants in the case, 12 were convicted. Two were sentenced to death and five others to life imprisonment.
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