April 4 2018: On the seventh anniversary of Abdulhadi Al Khawaja’s arrest, Activist Brian Dooley and Danish Parliamentarian Lars Aslan have been barred from visiting him.
They were travelling to Manama on Tuesday afternoon to visit him. After landing their passport was taken away and they were held overnight at the airport before being told
that they will be deported for being considered as “security risk” according to Brian Dooley’s Twitter account.
The human rights situation in Bahrain has severely deteriorated in the last months. Torture and other ill-treatment, arbitrary arrests and detention, and grossly unfair trials before
military courts are key features of Bahrain’s “counter-terrorism” campaign. The country’s most prominent critical voices — including human rights defender Nabeel Rajab —
have been jailed and convicted on charges widely dismissed as trumped up and politically motivated.
The Bahrain Center for Human Rights believes that the deportation of Brian Dooley and Lars Aslan — if carried out — is unlawful and that Bahrain should immediately allow them
to access to diplomatic or other representatives of their country of nationality.