Local Editor

Two policemen convicted of torturing a protester to death in 2011 have had their jail terms slashed by four years following an appeal. The policemen were convicted of beating to death a detainee during a mass crackdown on dissent in 2011.
Bahrain's appeals court reduced the jail terms of the policemen involved from seven to three years, according to an anonymous judicial source who spoke to AFP. They were convicted by a lower court in December over two separate incidents.
Abdul Karim Fakhrawi was martyred in April 2011 after nine days in custody. While it the Bahraini authorities claimed he died of kidney failure, photographs of Fakhrawi's body leaked online, spark national outrage.
Fakhrawi was a co-founder of independent newspaper al-Wasat.
Even in December, the seven year sentence for the policeman involved in Fakhrawi's death was criticized as being too lenient. "The prosecutor changed the charges from 'torture leading to death' to 'beating leading to death'. They don't want to admit that there was torture," Sayed Hadi al-Mousawi, a member of Bahrain's al-Wefaq Society said.

On Monday, a further policeman also had his sentence reduced from seven years to three. He had been convicted of shooting a protester dead in February 2011. Ali Musheime suffered birdshot wounds. However, the court claimed on Monday that the incident had not been premeditated murder.

In April this year, a UN torture investigator, Juan Mendez, said that Bahrain has blocked him from a planned visit to the Gulf Arab state, terming it an "effective cancellation," since no alternate dates were proposed.
The following month, Human Rights Watch [HRW] demanded that authorities "immediately investigate allegations that officials are torturing activists in detention."

In Mid-September it emerged that Bahrain's law enforcement had also made a habit of regularly detaining children, who were forced to undergo humiliation and cruel treatment often bordering on torture, according to a HRW investigation.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team