AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): Manama is being accused of showing “utter disregard for human rights” following the latest court ruling against leading Bahraini human rights defender Nabeel Rajab.
On Tuesday, Manama’s court of appeals rejected a motion asking for Rajab’s lengthy prison sentence to be commuted to a non-custodial one.
Shortly after the ruling, Amnesty International wrote in a Twitter post that Rajab “should have not been imprisoned for expressing peaceful opinion in the first place”.
Following his arrest in the summer of 2016, Rajab was sentenced to a total of seven years behind bars over tweets and television interviews in which he criticized Manama’s human rights record.
The activist’s defense team has made repeated attempts to secure Rajab’s release by applying for alternative sentencing, but all such efforts have thus far been rejected.
The Director of Advocacy at the London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei said that “this is sadly what we have come to expect from Bahrain’s corrupt judicial system.”
“Today’s decision to keep the country’s leading human rights defender behind bars is purely political and the latest shameful attempt to stifle dissent,” Alwadaei added.
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source : LuaLua TV
Tuesday
17 September 2019
1:47:58 PM
976306
Manama is being accused of showing “utter disregard for human rights” following the latest court ruling against leading Bahraini human rights defender Nabeel Rajab.