Bahrain Crackdown: UK MPs Condemn Jailing Relatives of Rights Activist
Local Editor
Fifteen organizations and 27 MPs urged the British government to demand the release of three Bahrainis who have been detained as part of a pattern of abuse and harassment against human rights defenders and their families in the island state.
Campaigners said Sayed Nazar Alwadaei, Hajar Mansoor Hasan and Mahmood Marzooq Mansoor were imprisoned because they are relatives of Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, a human rights activist and the director of advocacy for the London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy [BIRD].
In a Thursday letter to British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, MPs including Caroline Lucas and Andy Slaughter said family members had been "ill-treated, tortured and interrogated" before being served with terrorism charges based on "coerced confessions".
The letter described the case against the family as "entirely political" and "designed to exert pressure on Mr. Alwadaei", who was attending the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva when the three were arrested in March. The London-based activist and his wife have been targeted for criticizing the Bahraini governing in the past.
Torture against rights activists in Bahrain has been well documented, including in a recent Amnesty International report that said at least 169 activists had been tortured, imprisoned, threatened or banned from travel by the state between June 2016 and 2017.
Sima Watling, a campaigner on Bahrain for the group, said the current situation was "very worrying" adding that reports that the trio had been tortured in jail were reliable.
"We know these interrogations took place and they did not take place in the way they are supposed to," she told Middle East Eye. "It seems to have been a targeting of Alwadaei because he is so outspoken."
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
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