Bahrain sentences 167 people to prison in crackdown on dissent

DUBAI:
A Bahraini court sentenced 167 people arrested at a sit-in outside the home of Bahrain’s leading Shia Muslim cleric in 2017 to between six months and 10 years in prison at a trial in late February, court documents and lawyers said.

Protesters had gathered at the home of Ayatollah Sheikh Isa Qassim fearing that he could be deported after the authorities revoked his citizenship as part of a crackdown on Shia activists, who accuse the Sunni-ruled kingdom of discriminating against them. In a raid on the sit-in, security forces killed five people and arrested hundreds more.

Court documents obtained by Reuters showed that at the sentencing on Feb. 27, the High Criminal Court handed 56 of the defendants 10 year prison terms. The majority received one-year terms.

The documents did not specify the charges but a government spokesperson said in a statement sent to Reuters they were found guilty for the “abduction and torture of innocent citizens and attacks on police officers”.

Two lawyers involved in the case said they had filed an appeal. The court acquitted four people in the case.

“None of the defendants came to the court when the sentences were announced because they feared being arrested,” one lawyer, who declined to be named, said.

The defendants were detained for six months before being released on bail in late 2017.

Mass trials such as this one became commonplace in Bahrain following a failed uprising in 2011 that was led by members of the Shia majority. Scores are imprisoned including leading opposition figures and human rights activists. Many others have fled abroad.

Former members of the disbanded opposition group al-Wefaq which was close to Qassim said on a Twitter account they run under the group’s name that the defendants are innocent and described the May 2017 raid as a “brutal, bloody attack”.

Many of Bahrain’s Shia say they are deprived of jobs and government services and treated as second class citizens in the country of 1.5 million, which is home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

Since then the Gulf island has seen sporadic clashes between protesters and security forces, who have been targeted by several bomb attacks.

The Bahraini government’s statement said that police showed up at Qassim’s home following “complaints from members of the public of widespread intimidation, including the kidnap and torture of citizens for reporting crimes and attempting to remove illegal barricades.”

“During the operation, the individuals attacked police officers with firebombs, axes, knives and metal rods,” the statement added. “All criminal acts are prosecuted in accordance with internationally recognized standards, while ensuring that individual rights are protected at all times.”

A US State Department human rights report released on Wednesday noted that authorities were still investigating the “circumstances surrounding the death of five protesters during a May 2017 security operation to clear protesters outside the house of Shia cleric Isa Qassim.”

London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) said the majority of those arrested have been subjected to “the most atrocious torture.”

 “This is a massively unfair trial which has passed completely unnoticed... this trial is a textbook example of the culture of impunity that prevails in Bahrain,” said Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, Director of Advocacy at BIRD.

Authorities denied accusations of torture.