Following their meeting on Thursday, Sheikh Salmam tweeted that Forst, who serves as the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, “repeatedly expressed his intent to visit Bahrain”.
The issue of granting Special Rapporteurs access to the Persian Gulf kingdom has been a major point of contention between Manama and the UN Human Rights Council.
In June, the UN’s human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said that Manama “permitted no visits at all by Special Procedures in the course of the past five years, and…accumulated more than five requests”.
During that time, scores of Bahraini human rights defenders have been jailed, tortured, sexually harassed and subjected to other forms of humiliating and ill-treatment.
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