al Khalifa regimes Western Allies allow their expatriate rights to be trampled

Canadian jailed for protesting in Bahrain
Oct 25 2011 – The Star

Canadian Naser al-Raas will begin a five-year sentence in a Bahraini prison on Wednesday. He is one of 13 people sentenced Tuesday to jail terms related to the uprising in the country. Canadian Naser al-Raas will begin a five-year sentence in a Bahraini prison on Wednesday. He is one of 13 people sentenced Tuesday to jail terms related to the uprising in the country.

Canadian Naser al-Raas will begin a five-year sentence in a Bahraini prison on Wednesday. He is one of 13 people sentenced Tuesday to jail terms related to the uprising in the country.

Naser al-Raas remembers the cramped office, the beatings, and the small gun pointed at his head. He remembers the cables used to tie his hands behind a chair and the blindfold fastened around his face.

He remembers the ambush at Bahrain International Airport on March 20, just as he was preparing to present his Canadian passport to customs and fly to Kuwait, where he was born.

He remembers three mock executions held under the desert sun. And he remembers the dingy cell in the notorious Al Qala prison, where he said he spent more than a month in solitary confinement, beaten and electrocuted daily, the screams of other tortured prisoners echoing through the halls.

Now on Wednesday, nearly six months after he was inexplicably released from that cell, authorities are set to enter his in-laws’ home in Bahrain — where he is staying with his Bahraini fiancée Zainab — and steer him to prison, for a five-year term for participating in antiregime demonstrations that swept the country beginning in February. At least 30 people have been reported killed in the crackdown.

Al-Raas was sentenced by a civilian court Tuesday for violating Bahrain’s illegal-assembly laws. A defence lawyer in Bahrain said he was one of 13 people sentenced to jail terms for links to anti-government protests and unrest in the Gulf kingdom.

The 28-year-old lived in Ottawa from 1996 to 2000, and his mother and brother are still there. He now works as an IT specialist in Kuwait.

Al-Raas had arrived in the tiny Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain on March 6 amid a countrywide crackdown on Shiites protesting against the Sunni monarchy.

“I didn’t chant against the government; it’s not my business,” he told the Star. “The country was in chaos.”

But when he tried to return to Kuwait two weeks later, he said, he was whisked away by men from Bahrain’s National Security Agency, an intelligence wing of the Ministry of the Interior.

Over the course of his imprisonment, al-Raas said he was beaten daily with a rubber hose. He also suffered excruciating chest pain. Al-Raas has pulmonary hypertension, a heart and lung condition.

His torture in Bahrain is recorded in a medical report filed by Doctors Without Borders obtained by the Star.

When he was released on April 28, al-Raas stripped off his prisoners’ garb and put on the Ottawa Senators T-shirt he’d worn to the airport. He said he made a forced on-camera confession to spying for the Iranian government. Then he was dumped in the street outside the prison, given back his glasses and wallet and told to take a taxi home. ..more