Bahrain: the death of political dissidence

Jawad Fairooz. Since the year 2011, the Bahraini judiciary has so far sentenced to death dozens of citizens following from the political crisis in the country that broke out during the Arab Spring.

To suppress the pro-democracy movement in Bahrain which erupted in February 2011, the authorities acted in brutal repression and committed grave violations including: extra-judicial killings, imprisoning activists and opposition leaders sentenced to life in prison, systematic torture and sexual assaults, revoking nationality, forcible deportation of citizens, depriving political rights, and issuing death penalty sentences.

As of October 2021, 27 individuals, 12 of whom are political prisoners, have exhausted all legal avenues for appeal. Whilst the Bahraini Government does not publicly release the names of individuals who are on death row, the below 12 individuals have had their death sentences confirmed by the Court of Cassation, the highest court in Bahrain. Once the Court of Cassation upholds the death sentence of an individual, they can no longer appeal it and must await the final stage of the process, the king’s ratification of their sentence.

With a judiciary that has no independence whatsoever and with political influence, the death penalty has been used as a tool to scare opposition members and supress dissidents.

Many death sentences were issued based on confessions extracted under torture, like in the cases of Hussein Ali Mousa and Mohamed Ramadhan, and others.

For example, on 15 January 2017, Bahrain executed Ali Al-Singace, Abbas Al-Samea and Sami Mushaima. United Nations human rights experts raised concerns that Bahraini authorities had reportedly coerced all three men into confessions with electric shocks and sexual humiliation, for which they were convicted and executed. The courts dismissed their lawyers’ arguments and refused to investigate their allegations of torture. They were executed less than a week after their sentences were upheld, with no prior notification given to them or their families. The UN Special Rapporteur on Executions described their executions as “extrajudicial killings”, given the illegality of how the information was obtained.

In another example, on 26 July 2019, Bahrain executed Ali Al-Arab, Ahmed Al-Malali, as well as an unnamed Bangladeshi national. They did not receive fair trials, despite calls from UN human rights experts for Bahrain to halt the executions amid concerns that Ali and Ahmed were coerced into making confessions through torture. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights “strongly condemn[ed]” the executions and reiterated its concerns that both Ali and Ahmed had been coerced into confessing to crimes they had not committed. Based on these facts, the most reasonable explanation possible is that Bahrain uses the death penalty as a political tool to suppress dissidents in the country.

JF. The people sentenced to death are kept in deteriorating detention conditions. They are totally isolated from other prisoners in Jau prison. Their treatment is harsh and degrading. Prisoners on death row suffer from poor detention conditions, as other prisoners do, but even more so. Bahrain prisons do not meet the UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.  

These are the deteriorating conditions in prisons in general:

• A clear lack of facilities maintenance and poor hygiene.

• Violation of privacy.

• Denial of access to education: Although prison authorities have allowed prisoners in some cases to continue their studies, they have not established any policies or procedures in order to provide them with opportunities to continue their education. Many prisoners complain of procrastination by the prison administration and lack of education for all prisoners, where procedures also may take a long time.

• Overcrowding: Bahraini prisons are one of the most overcrowded prisons in the Arab countries.

• Denial of medical treatment: Despite the high number of prisoners, particularly in Jau Central Prison, only few doctors are available and sometimes there are no doctors at all. As a result of this pressure on the doctors, and according to some testimonies, doctors are not able to perform medical examinations in all cases, but only give painkillers. The doctors delay the transfer of prisoners to hospitals and external clinics, while some of them are prevented from being transferred because the prison administration fails to take them to medical appointments arranged by the external health centre after the transfer by a prison doctor.

According to reliable reports, the prison authorities are adopting denial of treatment as one of the methods of torture, which resulted in the low level of health care in prisons.

Bahrain has been denying for years all visits by special rapporteurs or human rights experts to prisons and to check on prisoners’ conditions.

JF. The government continues to maintain that it imposes the death penalty “in accordance with international law and human rights standards including the United Nations Safeguards.” Bahraini authorities are increasingly implementing the death penalty for non-lethal offences, in direct violation of international law which prohibits it.

In application, this current interpretation of the death penalty does not appear to single out perpetrators for non-lethal offenses. Instead, it is used to strengthen cases against defendants whose charges are political in nature. The Bahraini State continues to rely on confessions coerced under torture and threats and continues to use the death penalty as a method of permanently silencing political prisoners.

As judiciary and legislative bodies are not independent or held accountable, they have proven ineffective in remedying this situation and are possibly complicit.

On many occasions, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) has epxressed the opinion that a credible case can be made that death-row prisoners have been unfairly and unlawfully arrested and detained, and that they have been subjected to torture and tried based on confession made under torture. 

SALAM DHR and other Bahraini NGOs call on the international community to hold the government of Bahrain accountable, and to pressure Bahrain to declare a moratorium on the implementation of the death penalty. We also call to pressure the government of Bahrain to fulfil its international obligations.

Salam DHR has launched a campaign against the death penalty, in collaboration with the World Coalition against the Death Penalty and coalition members. In October, Salam DHR and partner organisations called on the King of Bahrain to:

• Commute, immediately, as a first step, every case where the Court of Cassation has upheld the death penalty in Bahrain. At the end of 2020, there were 27 such cases in Bahrain;

• End Bahrain’s opposition to the biennial resolution at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) calling for the establishment of a moratorium on executions with a view to fully abolishing the death penalty, including by voting in favour or at least abstaining in the 2022 vote; and

• Declare a moratorium on the implementation of the death penalty in Bahrain