23 May 2017 – BIRD and Reprieve jointly submitted evidence to CAT in the form of the report, “Failure of the Bahraini Government to Investigate Torture Allegations in Death Penalty Cases”, on 9 March 2017. On Friday 12 May 2017, the United Nations Committee Against Torture (CAT) published its concluding observations on Bahrain. This report found that torture remains “widespread” in Bahrain, where a “climate of impunity” protects the perpetrators.
In this report, we showed that the oversight bodies tasked with handling torture complaints in Bahrain acted negligently by failing to promptly investigate the cases of Abbas al-Samea, Sami Mushaima and Ali al-Singace, who were executed on 15 January 2017 based on confessions extracted under torture, and Mohamad Ramadan and Hussain Ali Moosa, who currently face death sentences based on similarly weak evidence. In its concluding observations on Bahrain, CAT joined us in urging that impartial investigations should be conducted into these cases, and that Ramadan and Moosa specifically should be retried.
