UK pressure on Bahrain prevents executions

Bahrain’s judicial system has been accused of using the holidays to distract attention from the human rights abuses happening on its watch.

News ID: 448232

Date: 01 January 2020 - 09:04

RNA - Pro-democracy activists Mohamed Ramadan and Husain Moosa have managed to secure medical evidence of being tortured in prison and thus secure a review of their death sentences.

Their convictions are based on confessions they say were extracted under duress. The death sentence ruling was scheduled for the 25th of December 2019 Christmas Day but has been put off to January 8th.

Last week Amnesty International called for urgent action ahead of the ruling, insisting it must be fair and without recourse to the death penalty.

This is not the first Christmas Mohamed and Husain have spent staring down death. On December 25th 2018 they were spared the noose after the UK, under pressure, intervened.

According to Press TV, Human rights group Reprieve says the UK Government could bear some responsibility as a result of its ‘technical assistance’. Since 2012 more than 5-million-pounds of British taxpayer money has been spent on Bahrain’s justice system which uses arbitrarily arrests and torture to keep the population in check as a matter of course.

Mohamed says he was blindfolded, stripped naked, beaten with iron rods and threatened with rape against his family. Moosa says he was left hanging from a ceiling at Jau prison for three days, where guards trained by British instructors beat him with batons.

Reprieve says if the UK does not keep its eye on such cases and attend every hearing activists like these might still be executed.

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