The Former President of the BCHR banned from travelling despite a Supreme Court’s Decision
The National Security Service and the Prosecution obstruct the execution of the Supreme Court’s Decision to Lift the Travel Ban from Al-Khawaja, Al-Singaece and Others
The “Pardon” decision is Temporary and does not include closing the cases of the accused or dropping the rest of the sentences from the convicted!
The Former President of the BCHR banned from travelling despite a Supreme Court’s Decision
The National Security Service and the Prosecution obstruct the execution of the Supreme Court’s Decision to Lift the Travel Ban from Al-Khawaja, Al-Singaece and Others
The “Pardon” decision is Temporary and does not include closing the cases of the accused or dropping the rest of the sentences from the convicted!
The National Security Service is Persecuting the Released and Warns them from the International Organizations and blackmailing them to Work as Informants
Human Rights Organizations Demand Dissolving the National Security Service and to Hold those Responsible Accountable for Torture and other Violations
A report by:
The Bahrain Center for Human Rights and the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights
30 April 2009
Abdul-Hadi Abdulla Al-Khawaja – the former president of the BCHR and the regional coordinator for Frontline International – was subjected to temporary arrest and was prevented from leaving Bahrain when he was on his way to the Saudi Arabia through the causeway. This happened in the morning of Thursday 30 April 2009. Prior to this, International organizations, among them Human Rights Watch and Frontline and IFEX network demanded dropping the charges off Al-Khawaja and allowing him to travel. http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/03/11
Abdul-Hadi Al-Khawaja had received a week earlier a written letter by the president of the “Primary Supreme Criminal Court” dated 22 April 2009 addressed to the “Undersecretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Citizenship, Passport and Residence”, where the president of the Court asks him to lift the travel ban from Al-Khawaja. On 23 April, Al-Khawaja headed to the Ministry of Interior, where he completed all the procedures of lifting the ban. The officer in charge (Sameer Al-Jenaid) told him that he could travel at any time he wishes to. However, when Al-Khawaja was about to leave the country in the morning of 30 April, he was stopped and had his passport taken to the National Security office at the checkpoint who informed him that he was banned from travel. This is despite the fact that he showed them a copy of the Supreme Court’s decision. Al-Khawaja headed directly to the Ministry of Interior and met the officer in charge who expressed his surprise and assured him that the Ministry of Interior lifted the ban decision from all its services and at all border points, and that the ban order is perhaps related to another apparatus other than the Ministry of Interior.
In a similar case, Dr. Abdul-Jalil Sangaece – head of the human rights committee in Haq Movement for Liberty and Democracy – was subjected to travel ban for three times: on the 15th, 25th and 29th of April 2009, although the chief prosecutor Nawaf Hamza, who is in charge of what was known as Al-Hujjera case, had informed the Court that the Prosecution has no orders to ban travel for the ones included in the pardon, including Dr. Sangaece. However, the border authorities informed Dr. Abdul-Jalil Sangaece that there is ban against him by security services for an unspecified period. Other information received state that in the past few days, several activists who were released lately were banned from travelling.
The Bahraini Minister of Interior had released an official statement on 11 April 2009 that the King of Bahrain had issued a royal pardon for (178) convicts and accused in cases related to security issues (a term used to describe among others, cases relating to practicing freedom of speech, assembly, association and defending human rights). An official source assured to local and foreign media that the pardon includes the activist Abdul-Hadi Al-Khawaja, who was accused of delivering a speech in which he incited hatred against the ruling regime. The pardon also included Dr. Abdul-Jalil Sangaece, who was accused of joining an unauthorized organization and incitement against the regime. For more information on the Dr. Sangaece and others accused in Al-Hujjera case, refer to the statement of the World Organization Against Torture:
http://www.omct.org/index.php?id=&lang=eng&actualPageNumber=1&articleId=8374&itemAdmin=article
On the next day from the Minister’s statement, a large number of convicts and accused were released, among them all the detainees in what is called Al-Hujjera case, which includes Sheikh Mohammmed Habib Al-Muqdad (president of Al-Zahraa Society for Orphan Care) and Hasan Mushaima (president of Haq Movement for Liberty and Democracy) and Abdul-Redha Hasan Al-Saffar (activist in the Committees of the Families of Detainees and Unemployed). A group of human rights defenders who were arrested since 2007, and who were sentenced to imprisonment for a period ranging between 5 to 7 years were also released, among them: Hasan Abdul-Nabi Hasan (a leading member of the Unemployed and Low-waged Committee), Naji Ali Fateel (a board member of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights) and Mohammed Abdulla Sangaece (president of the Committee Against High Prices). A few days before that, Maytham Bader Al-Sheikh (a leading member of the Unemployed and Low-waged Committee) was released due deterioration in his health.
http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/node/1878
The defendants in Al-Hujjera case included 13 others, which according to the indictment were fugitives. Among them: Abbass Omran, board member in the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, who is currently in London, in addition to two others who previously obtained political asylum in the United Kingdom, they are: Abdul-Raoof Abdulla Al-Shayeb (the former president of the Committee of Martyrs and Torture Victims) and Ali Hasan Mushaima (a leading member of the Unemployed and Low-waged Committee). These three human righs defenders still do not know whether the cased filed against them has been dropped once and for all, or if they will be prosecuted once they return to Bahrain. http://www.bchr.net/ar/node/2761\
The release included other human rights defenders who were accused in similar cases, among them: Sayed Sharaf Sayed Ahmed (a board member of the Committee of Martyrs and Torture Victims) who was arrested since 11 February 2009. As well as Ali Hasan Salman and Jaffar Kadhim Ibrahim (members in the Committee of Activists and Prisoners of Conscience) who were arrested since 4 February 2009. http://www.frontlinedefenders.org/node/1817
However, the procedures and practices associated with the implementation of the release decision, raised the doubts of defense lawyers and the human rights organizations in the motives and the truth behind this release and its legal form. This is because:
• The text of the royal pardon has not been published yet in the Official Gazette, although 20 days have passed since the Minister of Interior’s declaration of the issuance of the pardon,
• The Supreme Court had continued the trial of the released persons even after the issuance of the pardon decision in the various cases. In response to the Public Prosecution’s request, the court declared the suspension of trials for an unspecified period, without mentioning the pardon decision and without clarifying the legal meaning of suspension of trials. This could mean that the authority could at any time activate the same charges against the released activists,
• Officials at the Ministry of Interior informed the human rights defenders who had been sentenced to imprisonment that their release does not mean dropping the rest of the term, but a stay of execution where the terms will be added to any sentences issued against them in any new case,
• The continuance of the travel ban, despite the pardon decision and despite the issuance of the Court’s decision to lift the ban, and
• The fact that 27 of the detained activists are still held in custody due to the pretext of the need to agree on the amount of compensation to the families of two persons who lost their lives in security incidents in mysterious circumstances.
Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, stated, “The practices and procedures associated with the royal pardon do not reflect at all an atmosphere of ease of tension, relief of pressure or an end to targeting activists and human rights defenders. It, on the contrary, indicates another phase of pressure and targeting, but with new means where the authority keeps the charges, the remaining terms of sentences and the travel ban as a sword drawn near their neck preventing them from activity and movement”.
Another matter of high concern is the reliable information that was received from some of the released activists that elements of the National Security Service are contacting and harrassing them where they are warned from cooperating with any local or foreign orgenization that gathers information on what the detainees were exposed to during the period of detention. They were also offered financial assistance and other benefits in return for using them as informants. The BCHR had issued a report on 5 May 2009, where it warned of the dangerous growing role of the National Security Apparatus (NSA) on the liberties and human rights. The report published information and statistics about NSA. For more information please refer to the report: “Statistics and Dangerous Facts on The National Security Apparatus and its Role in the Escalation of Violence”: http://www.bchr.net/ar/node/2781
The Bahrain Center for Human Rights and the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights call on internal and external actors concerned with promoting rights, liberties and protecting human rights defenders to do what ever possible in order to urge the Bahraini authorities to:
• lift travel ban from all human rights defenders and other activists, and not to exploit the travel ban in impeding the movement or work of these activists,
• release the rest of the activists and detainees (they are not less than 26), based on the pardon decision and based on lack of evidence on the allegations of committing acts of violence,
• Drop the charges and the remaining sentences off all who were included in the royal pardon, especially that there is no proof of any committed offense, and due to the absence of procedural standards according to the international standards in the arrest, investigation and trial,
• Directly end the practices of the National Security Apparatus by having a neutral and impartial investigation in the complaints against it, and to present the ones involved in the human rights violation to a fair trial, and to dissolve the NSA and return its jurisdictions to the regular security and judicial services,
• Guarantee the protection of human rights defenders and to provide the appropriate environment for their work;
• Guarantee the independence and efficiency of the judiciary, governing of law, and to establish and activate effective mechanisms of monitoring and accountability.