Bahrain Mirror: Bahrain's Fourth High Criminal Court, presided over by judge Ali Al-Dhahrani with membership of judges Jamal Awad and Hamad bin Salman Al Khalifa and Ahmad Sulaiman as secretariat, sentenced on Tuesday (December 15, 2015) 26 defendants to prison terms between 3 and 10 years, also fining them 2,660 Bahraini dinars each, over charges of participating in assembly, burning patrol vehicle and assaulting police in Al-Diraz.

The authorities said that a group of protestors in Al-Diraz area set fire to a number of tires and when the police arrived to the site, the suspects hurled Molotov cocktails and stones at them, leaving a number of policemen injured and a vehicle burnt.

The authorities also claimed that some of the suspects confessed to having involvement in the incident, and that weapons were found in the house of one of the defendants.

Human rights organizations challenge the charges raised against the suspects since they doubt the independence of the judiciary, whose members are assigned by royal decrees, and since it issues sentences based on confessions extracted under duress and evidence presented by secret investigations and anonymous witnesses.

Arabic Issue