Committee issues vague recommendations in 11 cases out of nearly 1000, arbitrary arrests and torture continue

Committee issues vague recommendations in 11 cases out of nearly 1000, arbitrary arrests and torture continue
26 February, 2012 – Bahrain Center for Human Rights

The committee set by the Supreme Judicial Council revealed that 502 persons were convicted by the Military court up until Oct 2011 in 165 different cases, and another 437 cases which were referred from the Military Prosecution to the Public Prosecution in Oct 2011 are still open. Out of nearly a thousand cases, the committee reviewed only 30 cases and issued recommendation in only 11 cases:

Dropping the charges and excluding them from the daily precedents record for 5 defendants, taking into consideration only the penalty executed in relation to the four defendants, the exclusion of the charge in relation to one defendant, and dropping the charge for of the precedents record for one defendant.

Al-Wefaq issued a statement in which it said the government is trying to to get around the recommendations of Bassiouni regarding the trials.

Mohsen Al Alawi, a lawyer who represents one defendant involved in the 30 cases, said it was not clear how many of the 11 defendants were still in jail or had been freed.

He said the fate of charges in the rest of the 30 cases was not clear.

“It’s very opaque,” he said, adding that in his view all military court verdicts should have been shelved in line with the commission’s recommendations, rather than allowing the cases to continue in civilian courts.

Cases still pending after transfer to civilian courts include controversial trials of medics, teachers and 14 men jailed for leading the protests last year. One of those 14, rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who also has Danish nationality, has been on hunger strike for more than two weeks.
(as reported on chicagotribune.com)

A 24 year old man from Malikeya gets arrested from his house then taken to a nearby checkpoint where he was brutally beaten by security forces using their batons, weapons and wooden sticks, leading to several bones fracture and bruises all over his body. He was then taken back to his area. …more