{"id":65558,"date":"2015-04-13T16:12:09","date_gmt":"2015-04-13T15:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=65558"},"modified":"2017-03-23T15:38:54","modified_gmt":"2017-03-23T15:38:54","slug":"end-reprisals-against-leading-human-rights-defender-nabeel-rajab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=65558","title":{"rendered":"End reprisals against leading human rights defender Nabeel Rajab"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bahraini

Bahraini human rights defender Nabeel Rajab (Photo: The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy)<\/p><\/div>\n

We in the Bahrain and international human rights NGO community condemn the\u00a0arrest and detention of Nabeel Rajab, a prominent human rights defender in the Kingdom of\u00a0Bahrain.<\/p>\n

On 4 April, the Bahrain Public Prosecution O\ufb03ce renewed Mr. Rajab\u2019s pretrial detention\u00a0for a further 15 days. We call on the Bahraini authorities to immediately and unconditionally\u00a0release Mr. Rajab and to drop all charges against him.<\/p>\n

On 2 April 2015, security forces surrounded Mr. Rajab\u2019s home and arrested him in relation to\u00a0two\u00a0new charges involving a series of recent tweets and an opinion piece published<\/a> in\u00a0the Hu\ufb03ngton\u00a0Post. The \ufb01rst charge is for \u201cinsulting a statutory body\u201d in connection to his documentation of mistreatment and torture in Bahrain’s Jau Prison. The second charge of \u201cspreading rumors during\u00a0wartime\u201d relates to his reporting on civilian deaths in Yemen, in contravention of a government\u00a0prohibition of any public mention that is critical of the con\ufb02ict.\u00a0If he is convicted on all current\u00a0charges, Mr. Rajab could face more than 10 years in prison.<\/p>\n

At the request of the public prosecution, Bahraini authorities advanced Mr. Rajab\u2019s scheduled\u00a0appeal hearing from 15 April to 5 April, only to adjourn it to 5 May. This appeal concerns the six\u00a0month sentence handed down to Nabeel Rajab on 20 January in relation to a tweet critical of the\u00a0Bahraini Ministries of Interior and Defense.Mr. Rajab\u2019s continued harassment and prosecution is a\u00a0clear violation of his right to freedom of expression as guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of\u00a0Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Article 19 of\u00a0the UDHR states that, \u201ceveryone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression\u2026\u201d while\u00a0Article 19 of the ICCPR<\/a> provides that, \u201cEveryone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.\u201d<\/p>\n

We therefore call on the government of Bahrain to immediately and unconditionally release Mr.\u00a0Nabeel Rajab from custody and drop all charges against him. We further call on Bahrain to ensure\u00a0free and peaceful expression, and to cease all harassment of and restrictions against civil society and human rights defenders in Bahrain.<\/p>\n

Sincerely,
\n\u2022Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB)
\n\u2022Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR)
\n\u2022Bahran Human Rights Society (BHRS)
\n\u2022Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD)
\n\u2022CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
\n\u2022English PEN
\n\u2022European Center for Democracy and Human Rights (ECDHR)
\n\u2022FIDH, within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
\n\u2022Index on Censorship
\n\u2022International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
\n\u2022No Peace Without Justice
\n\u2022OMCT, within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
\n\u2022Rafto Foundation for Human Rights
\n\u2022VIVARTA
\n\u2022World Movement for Democracy<\/p>\n

\"bahrain-letter-logos\"<\/p>\n

Background:
\nIndex award winner Mr Nabeel Rajab<\/a> is the President and Co-Founder of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights,\u00a0Deputy Secretary General of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), and a member\u00a0of Human Rights Watch\u2019s Middle East Advisory Board.<\/p>\n

Bahrain authorities have previously prosecuted Mr. Rajab on politically motivated charges. They\u00a0have never presented any credible evidence that Mr. Rajab has advocated, incited or engaged in\u00a0violence.<\/p>\n

Mr Rajab was detained from 5 May to 28 May 2012, for Twitter remarks criticizing the Interior\u00a0Ministry for failing to investigate attacks carried out by what Mr. Rajab said were pro-government\u00a0gangs against Shia residents. On 28 June 2012, a criminal court \ufb01ned him 300 Bahraini Dinars\u00a0(US$790) in that case. Authorities again detained Mr. Rajab on 6 June 2012, for another Twitter\u00a0remark calling for Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman al Khalifa to step down. On 9 July 2012, a\u00a0criminal court convicted and sentenced him to three months in prison on that charge. A court of\u00a0appeal overturned that verdict, but in a separate case a criminal court sentenced him to three\u00a0years in prison for organizing and participating in three unauthorized demonstrations between\u00a0January and March 2012. An appeals court reduced the sentence to two years, which Mr. Rajab\u00a0completed in May 2014.<\/p>\n

In September 2014 Mr. Rajab traveled to Europe to call for stronger international action on\u00a0Bahrain. He met with representatives of various governments, the European Union, the European\u00a0Parliament, and participated in the 27th\u00a0Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council.<\/p>\n

On 1 October 2014, less than 24 hours after his return to Bahrain, Mr. Rajab was summoned to\u00a0the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) Cyber Crimes Unit for interrogation, where o\ufb03cers\u00a0arrested and interrogated him for a number of hours in relation to a tweet he published while\u00a0abroad. This arrest ultimately lead to Mr. Rajab\u2019s conviction on 20 January 2015, on charges of\u00a0\u201cinsulting public institutions,\u201d referring to the Bahrain Ministries of Defense and Interior. The\u00a0Bahraini government charged him in relation to a tweet in which he criticized members of the\u00a0Bahraini security forces who have joined the ISIS extremist group. Mr. Rajab was charged under\u00a0Bahrain\u2019s penal code which unduly restricts and criminalizes, \u201c[o\ufb00ending] by any method of\u00a0expression the National Assembly, or other constitutional institutions, the army, law courts,\u00a0authorities or government agencies.\u201d The court sentenced him to six months in prison. Following\u00a0international attention in his case, Mr. Rajab was released on bail pending the completion of his\u00a0appeal.<\/p>\n

Most recently, Mr. Rajab was arrested on 2 April 2015 on separate charges of insulting a statutory\u00a0body, and spreading rumors during wartime. The former charge is related to Mr. Rajab\u2019s\u00a0documentation of human rights abuses at Bahrain\u2019s Jaw Prison on social media. The latter is\u00a0related to his documentation and criticism of Bahraini involvement in the Yemeni con\ufb02ict in an\u00a0opinion piece written for the Hu\ufb03ngton Post.<\/p>\n

Simultaneously, Mr. Rajab\u2019s previous case has been reopened by the public prosecution,\u00a0impeding his appeal. If these charges are upheld, and he is convicted of the new charges, Mr.\u00a0Rajab may face over 10 years in prison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We in the Bahrain and international human rights NGO community condemn the arrest and detention of Nabeel Rajab, a prominent human rights defender in the Kingdom of Bahrain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":64865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[716,8864,366,6903,581,6534],"tags":[7405,3368],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65558"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65558"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86980,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65558\/revisions\/86980"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/64865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}