Bahrain Human Rights Defender Zainab Al-Khawaja, faces Judge on more Trumped-Up Charges

Bahrain : Human Rights Defender Zainab Al-Khawaja Yet Again Faces the Judge for One of 13 Trumped-Up Charges Against Her
15 January, 2013 – Bahrain Center for Human Rights

Activist and human rights defender Zainab Al-Khawaja will go to court again on 15th January 2013 to be sentenced for a trumped-up charge of allegedly insulting a police officer.

Al-Khawaja was recently released from prison on the 27th of December 2012 after being arrested on the 9th of December 2012 for staging a one-person protest outside the intensive care unit at Salmaniya hospital, demanding visitation rights for an injured citizen. The security forces prevented the patient’s family from visiting him at the hospital.

Zainab Al-Khawaja currently has thirteen cases against her, 7 of them are active at the court, including the case of ripping a picture of the king. She has already been sentenced to imprisonment in several cases, and received hundreds of dinars in fines.

“Insulting a police officer” is a similar charge which was used against Activist Masooma Al-Sayed, which is believed to be aimed to prolong her detention. Masooma was scheduled to be released from prison on the 7th January, 2013, pending trial and paying a fine of 100 BHD, but the prison authorities refused to release her for unknown reasons. Al-Sayed was finally released on the 14th of January 2013. The judge who is prosecuting Al-Sayed is the same judge prosecuting Al-Khawaja.

(More information HERE)

The BCHR believes that the continued judicial harassment of Zainab Al-Khawaja is directly linked to both her work in the defense of human rights and democracy in Bahrain and for exercising her right to freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. …more