A prominent Bahraini activist on Monday lost his final appeal against a five-year jail term for writing tweets deemed “offensive” to the Bahraini regime.
The Gulf regime’s supreme court, whose verdicts are final, upheld the jail term against Nabeel Rajab, his second imprisonment verdict this year, for criticizing the monarchy on social media, a judicial source said.
Rights groups were swift to condemn the latest verdict — which is final and cannot be challenged.
Amnesty International declared Rajab a “prisoner of conscience” and said the sentence was a “travesty of justice” and “utterly outrageous”.
The London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy said the verdict “illustrates that Bahrain’s corrupt political system sought to continue his (Rajab) political persecution”.
Rajab, a high-profile rights activist who is already serving a two-year term in another case, was first handed the sentence in February by a lower court and an appeals court confirmed it in June.
He was convicted of insulting the regime by “deliberately disseminating, false and malicious news” on social media.
Rajab was also convicted of criticizing the Saudi-led war in Yemen and publicly offending a foreign country, a reference to Saudi Arabia.
The court convicted him of “endangering Bahrain’s military operations in Yemen.” Manama is part of the Saudi-led coalition that has been launching a brutal war against Yemen since March 2015.
He also tweeted criticism of the Bahraini government’s treatment of prisoners.
Source: Agencies
