Bahraini activists suffer more abuse, Saudi women persecuted
Yesterday one of the regime’s courts started the trial of an innocent native Bahraini man on trumpeted charges. Hassan Abd Ali Mohammad Sarhan, 35, is being targeted by the khalifi dictator in revenge against his brother, Moosa who is a prominent activist seeking democratic transformation in the country. The victim was handed by the Kuwaiti government last September as he was, himself, on his way to Bahrain. The case for which he is being tried is a false one with no other person appearing in the “court” alongside Hassan. This is an example of the khalifi persecution of the native Bahrainis. Instead of letting him free, the “judge” at the Fourth Supreme Criminal Court, Bader Al Abdulla, one of the khalifi henchmen, adjourned the trial for a week.
Sheikh Saeed Al Noori, a senior cleric who has been in jail since March 2011 is suffering severe ailment in his eye. He was scheduled to see a specialist on 25h December, but the appointment was cancelled while he was waiting at a police vehicle outside the clinic. There were other political prisoners in the vehicle also. No alternative date has been given for another appointment. After more than ten years in the hands of his torturers, Miqdad Saeed Al Jaziri is now suffering several diseases. He was given 14 years jail sentence by the “Judge” who refused to investigate his claims of serious torture. His torture was intensified after the riot by the inmates of the notorious Jau prison in March 2015. He has now spent ten and a half years and his body has almost collapsed as a result of the torture.
The native Bahraini political prisoners at Blocs 7,8,9 and 10 of the notorious Jau Prison are being subjected to severe ill-treatment and restrictions. The daily time they are let out from their cells has been reduced to 45 minutes. This period includes the contacts with their families. Since Sheikh Abdul Jalil Al Miqdad was attacked and abused three months ago, the prisoners were punished in this way for protesting the attack.
Amnesty International has taken up the case of Abdul Hadi Al-Khwaja and urged people to exert pressure on the khalifis to release him. It said: He was fined in two separate cases on 28 November 2022 by the Second Lower Criminal Court, following an unfair trial. He was denied his right to be represented by a lawyer of his choosing and to be tried in his presence. Al-Khawaja has so far spent more than 11 years of an unjust life sentence in Jaw prison for leading peaceful protests during the 2011 popular uprising in Bahrain. He was most recently convicted for breaking a chair and “insulting” a public servant in November 2021 while in Jaw prison after he was denied phone calls to his daughters who live abroad and fined 60 Bahraini dinars (equivalent to 160 US dollars). In a second case, Al-Khawaja was convicted of insulting a public servant and fined 100 Bahraini dinars (equivalent to 265 US dollars), in relation to an incident on 30 March 2022 when Al-Khawaja protested against the normalization deal with Israel (Abraham Accords) and had an altercation with a prison officer. According to a Public Prosecution document, the second case had included a charge of “insulting a foreign state”, in reference to Israel. Al-Khawaja’s lawyers have not yet been able to determine whether this charge is still pending. If brought forward, he could face up to two more years in prison and a fine.
One of the forgotten political prisoners is a Nottingham University graduate Hameed Al Basri, 65. He has just completed seven years of a 15 years sentence imposed by the royal court in 2015. Mr Al Basri, an Electrical Engineer had spent seven years behind bars between 1984 and 1991. In those four decades he received untold amounts of torture and abuse and is still going through ill-treatment and abuse.
Saudi Arabia has sentenced 35 women to 11 years in prison for expressing their views on social media. This follows the extremely harsh 34 and 45-year prison terms handed to two other women, Salma al-Shehab and Noura al-Qahtani, also for expressing their views online. Last month a prison sentence of 37 years was issued by the Saudi courts against the writer, translator, and programmer Osama Khaled, who has been detained since 2020. Meanwhile serious concerns have been raised about the fate of activist Abdullah al-Duraibi who had been arrested in May 2022. Since then there have been no news about him.
A report by the Associated Press on 3rd January has confirmed that the people of Bahrain and UAE have not rushed to normalize relations with the occupiers of Palestine. It said when Israel struck an agreement with the two countries “the ties would go beyond governments and become society-wide pacts, stoking mass tourism and friendly exchanges between people long at odds.” Although more than half a million Israelis have flocked to oil-rich Abu Dhabi and skyscraper-studded Dubai, just 1,600 Emirati citizens have visited Israel since it lifted coronavirus travel restrictions last year, the Israeli Tourism Ministry told The Associated Press. The ministry does not know how many Bahrainis have visited Israel because, it said, “the numbers are too small.” It said: “the expected flood of Gulf Arab tourists to Israel has been little more than a trickle.” The lack of Emirati and Bahraini tourists reflects Israel’s long-standing image problem in the Arab world and reveals the limits of the Abraham Accords, experts say.
Bahrain Freedom Movement
4th January 2023