Bahrain to execute two activists despite concerns over torture
Bahrain’s highest court upheld the death penalty against two men charged with killing a policeman, despite international concern over confessions that rights groups say were extracted through torture.
Pro-democracy activists Mohammed Ramadhan and Husain Moosa were arrested in 2014 after a policeman was killed in a bombing in a village northeast of the Persian Gulf island nation’s capital, Manama. Ten other people tried with them have also been jailed, theguardian.com reported.
Ramadhan and Moosa have now exhausted all legal remedies and their execution could occur at any time.
British MPS and peers from all parties last week urged the Bahraini royal family to reconsider, partly because there was so much concern from advocacy groups that confessions made in 2014 but since withdrawn could not be deemed safe.
The UK provides security assistance to Bahrain’s prison and judicial departments, and critics say the aid is achieving little by way of reform but instead primarily acts as a shield to allow Britain to maintain a major strategic naval base in the kingdom.
Some British MPS have demanded that the UK end its assistance if the executions go ahead, but the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has declined to give such an undertaking, saying it is convinced that the kingdom is seeking to reform.
The FCO strongly believes any representations are most effective if conducted privately, and is determined not to jeopardize a military and trade alliance. On Sunday, British Ambassador to Bahrain Roderick Drummond met Bahrain’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani by videoconference. The UK is planning to double its trade with Bahrain, and is dependent on the naval base.
The decision of the court was confirmed by the public prosecutors on their Instagram page on Monday.
Mohammed’s wife, Zainab Ebrahim, said she and her husband’s lawyer had been barred entry to the courtroom and she had not been given a reason. She wrote on Twitter: “The terror of knowing that my husband can be executed by firing squad at any moment without proper notice is tearing me apart. I don’t know how I will be able to tell my three children that their father is never coming home.”
Her husband had also used Twitter to appeal for help, saying he knew few would listen to him since he was not famous and did not have money.
‘Another dark stain’
“Today’s verdict is yet another dark stain in the struggle for human rights in Bahrain, demonstrating the regime’s iron grip over the country’s corrupt Judiciary. This horrendous injustice could not have happened without the tacit acceptance of Bahrain’s Western allies,” Director of Advocacy at Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei said.
Director of the legal charity Reprieve Maya Foa said: “Faced with demands from MPS to act to save these men’s lives, the government once again talked up its relationship with Bahrain and the UK support that has supposedly helped the kingdom ‘head in a positive direction’ on human rights.
“The foreign secretary talks about regimes with blood on their hands, but Britain’s role in these unlawful death sentences, and apparent unwillingness to intervene to stop them, is deeply disquieting.”
Hopes for their release were first raised in 2018 when the court of cassation overturned the death sentences and ordered local oversight bodies to investigate whether the men had been tortured, after representations by human rights groups. Their death sentences were reimposed on January 8 by the high court of appeal.
Bahraini authorities reiterated on Monday that the two men were behind a February 14 “terrorist” attack in Al-dair, a village north of the capital Manama, AFP reported.
The incident allegedly came amid a wave of attacks against police and other violent incidents that erupted after mass street protests in 2011 demanded an elected prime minister and a constitutional monarchy in Bahrain.
‘Grossly unfair’
Amnesty International condemned Monday’s ruling and described the trial as “grossly unfair”.
“Bahrain’s Judiciary has decided to blatantly ignore court evidence of torture in the case... despite the repeated violations of the men’s right to a fair trial since their arrest over six years ago,” Lynn Maalouf, Amnesty’s Middle East research director, said in a statement.
Authorities in the tiny kingdom have cracked down hard on dissent since the 2011 protests. The kingdom rejects allegations of human rights violations and denies imposing discriminatory measures against its Shia citizens.