Continued judicial harassment and arbitrary detention of Mr. Nabeel Rajab

Judicialharassment

Bahrain

January9, 2017

The Observatory for the Protection of Human RightsDefenders, a partnership of FIDH and the World Organisation Against Torture(OMCT), has received new information and requests your urgent intervention inthe following situation in Bahrain.

New information:

The Observatory has been informed by reliable sourcesabout the continued judicial harassment and arbitrary detention of Mr. Nabeel Rajab, co-founder and Presidentof the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR), founding Director of the GulfCenter for Human Rights (GCHR), Deputy Secretary General of FIDH from 2012 to2016 and a member of the Middle East advisory committee at Human Rights Watch.

According to the information received, on January 5,2017, the Public Prosecution renewed Mr. Nabeel Rajab’s pre-trial detention fora further 15 days, pending investigation.

On December 28, 2016, the Public Prosecution orderedthe pre-trial detention for seven days of Mr. Nabeel Rajab, pendinginvestigation into televised interviews dating back to 2014. These interviewswith television networks Lua Lua Channel, Al Etijah TV and Al-AlamNews Network concerned the human rights situation in Bahrain. Within thiscase, Mr. Nabeel Rajab is being prosecuted on charge of “deliberately spreadingfalse information and malicious rumors with the aim of discrediting the State”(Article 134 of the Penal Code)[1],which carries up to three years in prison. He is currently detained in solitaryconfinement at East Riffa police station.

Mr. Rajab has been continuously detained since June13, 2016 and is also facing 15 years in prison in relation to other chargesregarding comments posted by Mr. Rajab on Twitter in 2015 aboutconditions of detention in Jaw prison and the war in Yemen. He was alreadydetained from April 2 to July 13, 2015 for the same charges, which include thefollowing: “disseminating false rumours in time of war” (Article 133 of thePenal Code), “insulting a statutory body” (Article 216) and “offending aforeign country [Saudi Arabia]” (Article 215). The next hearing in this casewill be held on January 23, 2017 (see background information).

The Observatory is concerned that Mr. Nabeel Rajab’s health has severelydeteriorated while in detention. Most worryingly, he has been held in solitaryconfinement for the vast majority of that period and denied access to propercare. According to Mr. Rajab’s family he has lost 7kg since his arrest, hasdeveloped high blood pressure and has irregular heart beats.

The Observatory denounces the continued arbitrary detention of Mr.Nabeel Rajab, which seems to be yet another evidence of a long-standing patternof harassment against him to sanction his legitimate human rights activity.

The Observatory calls upon the Bahraini authorities to immediately andunconditionally release Mr. Nabeel Rajab, and to put an end to any act ofharassment against him - and more generally against all human rights defendersin Bahrain.

Backgroundinformation:

Mr. Rajab has faced continuous judicial harassment for his legitimatehuman rights work since his first arrest in June 2012. On July 9, 2012, Mr.Rajab was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for allegedly libelling theresidents of Al Muharraq via several tweets posted on his twitter account. OnAugust 23, 2012, Mr. Rajab was acquitted by the Higher Appeal Court.

On August 16, 2012, the Lower Criminal Court sentenced Mr. Rajab tothree years of imprisonment in relation to three cases related to hisparticipation in peaceful gatherings in favour of fundamental freedoms anddemocracy. In December 2012, the Appeals Court reduced the sentence to twoyears of imprisonment. Mr. Nabeel Rajab completed his sentence and was releasedin May 2014.

On October 1, 2014, Mr. Nabeel Rajab was summoned and remanded indetention by the General Directorate of Anti-Corruption and Economic andElectronic Security of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for “insultinga public institution” under Article 216 of the Penal Code. The case related toa tweet he published in September 2014, in which he criticised the militaryinstitutions for generating extremist ideologies (the “terrorism tweet” case).On November 2, 2014, the Third Lower Criminal Court ordered Mr. Rajab’s releasebut barred him from leaving the country.

On January 20, 2015, the Third Lower Criminal Court sentenced Mr. NabeelRajab to six months' imprisonment on the charges of “insulting public institutionsand the army”, pursuant to Article 216 of the Penal Code.

In 2015, two other criminal charges were brought against Mr. Rajab. OnFebruary 26, 2015, Mr. Rajab was summoned for investigations for charges of“inciting hatred towards the regime” in relation to a speech he made inFebruary 2011 during a funeral (the “funeral speech case”). To date, the policeinvestigation is ongoing.

In addition, on April 2, 2015, over twenty police cars surrounded Mr.Rajab’s house and policemen arrested him. Mr. Rajab was then sent to theGeneral Directorate of Anti- Corruption and Economic and Electronic Security tobe interrogated and placed in detention in solitary confinement in Isa TownPolice Station. On April 3, 2015, Mr. Rajab was interrogated by the CID regardingtwo new charges brought against him under criminal case No. 2015/38288. Thefirst charge was “insulting a statutory body”, referring to the Ministry ofInterior in relation to tweets he posted denouncing the torture of detainees atJaw Prison (the “Jaw torture tweets” case). The second charge was“disseminating false rumours in time of war”, in relation to tweets hepublished about the Saudi-Arabia led coalition air strikes in Yemen (the “Yementweets” case). If sentenced on the second charge, Mr. Rajab could be facing upto 10 years' imprisonment. Mr. Rajab refused to sign the police minutes of theinvestigations. On April 4, 2015, the Public Prosecution ordered seven daysdetention pending investigation. On April 5, 2015, security police confiscatedall electronic devices belonging to Mr. Rajab and members of his family.

On April 11, 2015, the Prosecution ordered an additional fifteen days indetention for Mr. Rajab. On April 26, 2015, the Public Prosecution officiallycharged Mr. Rajab under Articles 133 and 216. The Public Prosecutionsubsequently extended his detention for an additional fifteen days. On May 11,the Bahraini High Court extended Mr. Rajab ́s preventive detention for 15 days.

On May 14, 2015, the Bahrain Criminal Court of Appeal upheld thesix-month prison sentence (the “terrorism tweet” case).

On July 13, 2015, the King of Bahrain Hamad Ben Issa Al-Khalifa orderedthrough Royal Pardon the release of Mr. Nabeel Rajab for health reasons. Mr.Rajab had already served three of the six months’ jail sentence. Moreover, onthe same date, the Public Prosecution imposed a travel ban against Mr. Rajab inrelation to criminal case No. 2015/38288 related to the Jaw torture and Yementweets cases.

Mr. Rajab’s lawyers subsequently filed appeals against the travel banwith the investigating prosecutor on September 2, 2015, with the AttorneyGeneral on September 16, and with the Office of the Public Prosecution onOctober 1, 2015. They received no response to such petitions. On December 3, 2015,Mr. Rajab's lawyers submitted another petition to the Attorney Generalrequesting the lift of the travel ban imposed on Mr. Nabeel Rajab on July 13,2015. In the written request filed to the Attorney General, Mr. Rajab's lawyersraised the issue of urgency, as Mr. Rajab's wife health is continuouslydeteriorating and needs treatment outside of Bahrain, accompanied by Mr. Rajab.This request was disregarded.

In the morning of June 13, 2016, police forces reportedly led by theCybercrime Unit arrested Mr. Nabeel Rajab, after raiding his house and seizinga number of electronic devices. In the afternoon, Mr. Rajab was able to contacthis wife by phone, and reported being detained at East Riffa police station.

On June 14, he was transferred to the Public Prosecution, which remandedhim in custody for seven days, on accusations of “publishing and broadcastingfalse news that undermine the prestige of the State” under Article 134 of thePenal Code[2].

On June 21, 2016, Mr. Nabeel Rajab appeared before the PublicProsecution, which remanded him in custody for eight additional days, in spiteof a request for immediate release made by his legal counsel.

On June 28, 2016, Mr. Nabeel Rajab was transferred from police custodyto the Bahrain Defence Force (BDF) Hospital due to unprecedented heartproblems. On the same day, he was examined by a doctor, and was transferredback to West Riffa police station.

On July 12, during the hearing, the judge dismissed the request forrelease filed by Mr. Rajab’s lawyers and the hearing was postponed to August 2.

On August 2, 2016, the High Criminal Court, formed of judges Messrs.Abdulla Al Ashraf, Ali Al Dahrani and Sh. Hamad Bin Salman Al Khalifa, decidedto postpone the trial to September 5, without providing any justification.

During the hearing, the lawyers of Mr. Rajab requested his provisionalrelease on the basis of his health conditions and the lack of evidence, but therequest was rejected by the Court. Instead, the judge ordered to refer Mr.Rajab to the prison’s clinic.

On September 4, Mr. Rajab was summoned and questioned by CID officials.He was denied access to a lawyer on this occasion.

On September 5, 2016, the Public Prosecution announced that additionalcharges had been brought against Mr. Nabeel Rajab, for deliberatelydisseminating “false news and information and tendentious rumours thatundermine the kingdom’s prestige and stature”, in relation to a letterpublished in the New York Times on September 4, 2016[3],describing his judicial harassment and arbitrary detention. If convicted, thiscould add one year to his final sentence. In total, he now faces up to 16 yearsin prison. Therefore the court decided to postpone once again the next hearingin his trial to October 6, 2016.

On October 3, 2016, Mr. Nabeel Rajab underwent surgery to remove hisgallbladder. The surgery would result from his poor detention conditions sinceJune 2016.

On October 6, 2016, the High Criminal Court decided after a five minuteshearing to postpone the trial to October 31st, without providing anyjustification. At the beginning of the hearing, instead of issuing thejudgment, the Judge stated that the Court had taken note of the requestsubmitted by Mr. Nabeel Rajab’s lawyers to receive copies of their client’smedical record and had decided to adjourn the case even. Before the hearing,Mr. Rajab’s lawyers asked the Court a copy of his medical reports after theMinistry of Interior and the Public Prosecution failed to provide them, inclear violation of Mr. Rajab’s right to be informed of his own healthcondition.

Once more on October 31, 2016, Judge Ebrahim Al-Zayed of the Fourth HighCriminal Court postponed the trial until December 15 in order to obtain atechnical expert from the Cyber-Crime Unit to determine who runs Rajab’stwitter account. Rajab arrived at the court right before the hearing, and wastaken out immediately after the Judge made his pronouncements, while Rajab’slawyers were still making applications.

For the fifth time in a row, on December 15, 2016, after a fifteenminutes hearing during which Mr. NabeelRajab was not allowed to speak, the Fourth High Criminal Court postponedthe verdict until December 28, 2016 and refused to release him.

On December 21, 2016, the Cybercrime Unit of theMinistry of Interior took Mr. Nabeel Rajab out of custody for interrogationfollowing the publication of a letter[4]quoting him in French newspaper Le Mondeon December 19, 2016. The Cybercrime Unit is reportedly accusing Mr. Rajab ofusing the article to “spread false information and tendentious rumoursinsulting Bahrain and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) States and harmingtheir relations”. The letter urged Paris and Berlin to “reassess theirrelationship with these monarchies, which actively work against democracy and humanrights and fan the flames of violence and extremism”.

On December 28, 2016, Manama’s Fifth High CriminalCourt acceded to an application for Mr. Nabeel Rajab’s temporary releasefollowing a failure to give any basis or any sufficient evidence of a linkbetween him and the Twitter account with respect to the Yemeni and Jaw prisontweets.

Then Mr. Rajab was taken to the CID for temporaryrelease. However, he was re-arrested later on the same day and referred to thePublic Prosecution in relation to an investigation into televised interviewsdating from 2014, which commenced in mid-June 2016.

Actions requested:

Please write to the authorities of Bahrain urging themto:

The Observatory urges the authorities of Bahrain to:

i. Guarantee the physical and psychological integrityof Mr. Nabeel Rajab and that of all human rights defenders in Bahrain;

ii. Release Mr. Nabeel Rajab immediately andunconditionally, as his detention is arbitrary and its conditions amount toill-treatment and are endangering his life;

iii. Put an end to any act of harassment, including atthe judicial level, against Mr. Nabeel Rajab and against all human rightsdefenders in Bahrain;

iv. Conform in any circumstances with the provisionsof the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, adopted on December 9, 1998 bythe United Nations General Assembly, in particular its Articles 1,Article 6 (c)and 12.2;

v. Ensure in all circumstances respect for humanrights and fundamental freedoms in accordance with international human rightsstandards and international instruments ratified by Bahrain.

Addresses:

• CheikhHamad bin Issa AL KHALIFA, King of Bahrain, Fax: +973 176 64 587

• CheikhKhaled Bin Ahmad AL KHALIFA, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Fax : 00973 17 21 0575; ofd@mofa.gov.bh

• CheikhKhalid bin Ali AL KHALIFA, Minister of Justice and Islamic Affairs, Fax: +973175 31 284

• Lt.Gen. Cheikh Rashed bin Abdulla AL KHALIFA, Minister of Interior, Email: info@interior.gov.bh

• H.E.Mr. Yusuf Abdulkarim Bucheeri, PermanentMission of Bahrain to the United Nations in Geneva, 1 cheminJacques-Attenville, 1218 Grand-Saconnex, CP 39, 1292 Chambésy, Switzerland.Fax: + 41 22 758 96 50. Email: info@bahrain-mission.ch

• H.E.Ahmed Mohammed Yousif Aldoseri, Embassy of the Kingdom of Bahrain to theKingdom of Belgium, Avenue Louise 250, 1050 Brussels, Belgium; Fax: 0032 (0)26472274; E-mail: Brussels.mission@mofa.gov.bh

***

Paris-Geneva,January 9, 2017

Kindlyinform us of any action undertaken quoting the code of this appeal in yourreply.

TheObservatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders (the Observatory) wascreated in 1997 by the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and FIDH. Theobjective of this programme is to intervene to prevent or remedy situations ofrepression against human rights defenders. FIDH and OMCT are both members of ProtectDefenders.eu,the European Union Human Rights Defenders Mechanism implemented byinternational civil society.

[1] An investigation into these charges opened on June14, 2016.

[2] Article 134of the Penal Code provides that “A punishment of imprisonment for at least 3months and a fine of at least BD100, or either penalty, shall be inflicted uponevery citizen who deliberately releases abroad false or malicious news,statements or rumors about domestic conditions in the State, so as to underminefinancial confidence in the State or adversely affect its prestige or position,or exercise in any manner whatsoever activities that are harmful to thenational interests. The punishment shall be imprisonment for a period notexceeding 10 years if an offence is committed in wartime”.

[3]