12 November 2018 – Today, Bahrain’s Fourth High Criminal Court sentenced four individuals to death on charges related to terrorism, three of them being tried in absentia. The charges relate to an incident where a police car was bombed in Duraz on 18 June 2017, leading to the death of a police officer according to the Ministry of Interior.
While three of the four individuals are outside of Bahrain, the fourth individual is being held in detention. The citizenship of all four individuals has been revoked as well. This brings the total number of Bahraini revocation of citizenship cases to 764 since 2012, with an unprecedented 258 cases occurring in 2018 alone. The four individuals were also fined 1,000 BDH each.
The Court convicted:
- Hussain Abdullah Marhoon Rashid: In custody. Hussein had already been convicted in absentia on terrorism-related charges in October 2014.
- Sayed Mohammed Qassim Mohammed Hassan Fadhel: Sayed was already sentenced to life imprisonment in February 2016.
- Hussain Ali Ahmed Dawood: Hussain was already sentenced to life imprisonment three times for three separate cases.
- Ahmed Mohammed Ali Mahdi Ibrahim Zain Al Deen: Ahmed was already convicted on terrorism-related charges.
As this deeply unfair trial concludes, the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) condemns the ruling in the strongest possible terms and urges Bahraini authorities to issue a moratorium on executions, pending the abolition of the death penalty once and for all.
Commenting, Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, Director of BIRD, said: “There is no justice in this verdict. It is now the trend for Bahraini courts to use confessions extracted under torture to sentence people to death. The revocation of citizenship has become as commonplace as speeding tickets in Bahrain, where most victims are left stateless in blatant violation of international law. International monitoring is absolutely vital to ensuring some justice is administered by Bahrain’s kangaroo courts.”
Death Penalty in Bahrain
Despite pressure from the UN and the international community, the death penalty remains an integral part of the Bahraini legal system. There are currently 18 Bahraini nationals on death row, all sentenced in political cases.
In January 2017, three torture victims, Abbas AlSameea, Sami Mushaima and Ali Alsingace, were executed six days after the Court of Cassation upheld their death sentence. This is widely considered to be the first execution related to political unrest in Bahrain since 1996.
Records of Citizenship Revocation per Year
According to BIRD’s documentation, there have been 764 cases in which the citizenship of a Bahraini national has been revoked by the government since 2012.
- 258 in 2018
- 156 in 2017
- 90 in 2016
- 208 in 2015
- 21 in 2014
- 31 in 2012
