Bahrain Activist Gets 5-Year Sentence for ‘Insulting’ Tweets
- 6 years ago
Bahrain Activist Gets 5-Year Sentence for ‘Insulting’ Tweets
Saudi Arabia wrote that It fills me with shame that my country, Bahrain, is bombing Yemen, with United States support,
Bahrain said that It is absolutely outrageous that he be forced to spend a further five years in jail simply for daring to voice his opinions online.
He is already serving a two-year sentence handed down in July for comments he made in television interviews,
and faces more charges related to an Op-Ed published in The New York Times in 2016, "Letter From a Bahraini Jail." In it, Mr. Rajab recounted a recent meeting with John Kerry, then the secretary of state "I would like to ask Mr. Kerry now: Is this the kind of ally America wants?" he wrote.
21, 2018
LONDON — A court in Bahrain sentenced a prominent democracy advocate on Wednesday to five years in prison for tweets about abuses in prisons and the Saudi-led war in Yemen, continuing the crackdown
that crushed the Arab Spring uprising there seven years ago.
As those charges were pending, Mr. Rajab reiterated his criticisms last May in another opinion column in
The New York Times appealing to President Trump on the eve of his trip to Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
Backed by rulers in neighboring Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain’s Sunni Muslim royal family has used tanks, riot police officers, sweeping arrests
and tight censorship to thwart demands for democracy among the Shiite Muslim majority, and the resulting conflict has inflamed sectarian tensions around the region.
Saudi Arabia wrote that It fills me with shame that my country, Bahrain, is bombing Yemen, with United States support,
Bahrain said that It is absolutely outrageous that he be forced to spend a further five years in jail simply for daring to voice his opinions online.
He is already serving a two-year sentence handed down in July for comments he made in television interviews,
and faces more charges related to an Op-Ed published in The New York Times in 2016, "Letter From a Bahraini Jail." In it, Mr. Rajab recounted a recent meeting with John Kerry, then the secretary of state "I would like to ask Mr. Kerry now: Is this the kind of ally America wants?" he wrote.
21, 2018
LONDON — A court in Bahrain sentenced a prominent democracy advocate on Wednesday to five years in prison for tweets about abuses in prisons and the Saudi-led war in Yemen, continuing the crackdown
that crushed the Arab Spring uprising there seven years ago.
As those charges were pending, Mr. Rajab reiterated his criticisms last May in another opinion column in
The New York Times appealing to President Trump on the eve of his trip to Riyadh, the Saudi capital.
Backed by rulers in neighboring Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain’s Sunni Muslim royal family has used tanks, riot police officers, sweeping arrests
and tight censorship to thwart demands for democracy among the Shiite Muslim majority, and the resulting conflict has inflamed sectarian tensions around the region.