Bahrain’s high court upheld on Monday a five-year jail sentence against human rights activist Nabeel Rajab, his lawyer said, in a move described by campaign groups as « political persecution » and « utterly outrageous ».
DUBAI (Reuters) – Bahrain’s high court upheld on Monday a five-year jail sentence against human rights activist Nabeel Rajab, his lawyer said, in a move described by campaign groups as “political persecution” and “utterly outrageous”.
An outspoken critic of the Bahraini government who played a prominent role in pro-democracy protests in 2011, Rajab was convicted in February over social media posts in which he accused the prison authorities of torture and criticized Saudi Arabia’s air strikes in Yemen.
Rajab, in his mid-50s, is already serving a two-year term for torture allegations he made in a news interview and faces a number of other cases, including over a column he wrote in the New York Times in 2016.
“The Court of Cassation rejected the appeal and upheld the sentence of five years in prison against Nabeel Rajab for his tweets,” his lawyer, Mohamed Al Jishi, told Reuters by telephone.
