Bahrain Mirror: Bahrain's Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society said that its General Secretariat held its regular meeting at the society's headquarters and discussed the main developments on the local, regional and international levels. One of the main points the society discussed during its meeting was John Kerry's call to reach a national reconciliation in Bahrain.

Al-Wefaq highlighted the importance of Kerry's call, stressing that it "supports and encourages all the calls issued in this regard for it is an irrevocable option amid the disastrous political, human rights, security, social and economic situation."

"The door for dialogue door is shut by the authorities. There is a total boycott between the regime and influential and effective parties in the society. All the doors to communication are locked. There are no more ways or spaces for agreeing on any kind of issues; a matter that contradicts with the least constituents of a state ," it added.

Regarding Human Rights Watch, the society said "the report unequivocally talked about torture and ongoing practices against detainees aiming at extracting false confessions, describing it "as a very dangerous issue". Al-Wefaq added that "this report is an important letter to the international community regarding these claims and information that speak of how torture is turning into a systematic practice after 4 years of BICI recommendations and 3 years of Geneva's recommendations."

The meeting also tackled "the death penalty cases as the number of people sentenced to death have reached 7. All of them said that their confessions were extracted under torture," pointing out that the court of cassation upheld the death penalties against both Mohammad Ramadan and Hussein Ali despite that their lawyers said that they were both tortured and are innocent of the charges brought against them. Al-Wefaq further stated that this calls for a "serious stance", welcoming "the UK stance that opposes the death penalties in Bahrain."

Arabic Issue