Bahrain: Hundreds Convicted in Unjust Trials

29.02.2012

Bahrain has routinely convicted hundreds of opposition activists and others of politically motivated charges in unfair trials, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The government should void the convictions in trials before Bahrain’s military and civilian courts that fell far short of international fair trial standards, Human Rights Watch said.

The 94-page report, “No Justice in Bahrain: Unfair Trials in Military and Civilian Courts,”documents serious due process violations in high-profile trials before Bahrain’s special military courts in 2011 – including one trial of 21 prominent political activists and another of 20 doctors and other medical personnel – and in politically motivated trials before ordinary criminal courts since 2010. Serious abuses included denying defendants the right to counsel and to present a defense, and failure to investigate credible allegations of torture and ill-treatment during interrogation.

“Grossly unfair military and civilian trials have been a core element in Bahrain’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should remedy the hundreds of unfair convictions of the past year by dropping the cases against everyone convicted on politically motivated charges and by adopting effective measures to end torture in detention.”

The egregious violations of fair trial rights in political cases do not just reflect the poor practices of individual prosecutors and judges, but serious, systemic problems with Bahrain’s criminal justice system, Human Rights Watch said.

In a February 13, 2012 interview, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa told Der Spiegel magazine that: “There are no political prisoners as such in Bahrain. People are not arrested because they express their views, we only have criminals.”

The Human Rights Watch report is based on more than 50 interviews with defendants, defense lawyers, and trial observers, and a comprehensive examination of available trial verdicts and other court documents. Human Rights Watch wrote to Bahrain’s attorney general in November 2010 and to the justice minister in December 2011 concerning the trials, but received no response.

At least five people died as a result of torture while in custody following the government crackdown on mostly peaceful protests that began in mid-March 2011, according to the November report of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, a body of five international jurists and human rights experts set up by King Hamad. Human Rights Watch has documented the persistent practice of torture and ill-treatment by Bahraini security officers over the past several years.

Those whose convictions should be voided and who should be released from prison include protest leaders such as Ibrahim Sharif, Abdul Hadi al-Khawaja, Hassan Mushaima, and Abdul Wahab Hussein, Human Rights Watch said.

In one case a nurse was convicted of “incit[ing] … hatred and contempt for the governing regime” and of “destroy[ing] moveable property … in furtherance of a terrorist purpose” because she allegedly stepped on a photo of the prime minister.

Human Rights Watch called on the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and other countries to suspend all military and security-related sales and assistance to Bahrain until the government addresses the serious rights violations resulting from the suppression of peaceful demonstrations and the unfair trials.