Bahrain Mirror: Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) said that a Bahraini court sentenced on Monday (March 26, 2018) Nizar Al-Wadaie, brother-in-law of UK-based human rights activist Ahmad Al-Wadaie, in a third case fabricated against him, to 7 years in jail. Nizar faces now 13 years in prison.

The news verdict issued by Bahrain's  Fourth High Criminal Court, presided over by judge Ali Al-Dhahrani, included 9 defendants who were all sentenced to 7 years in prison, expect for one who was sentenced to 3 years only. The court also imposed a fine of 14,000 BD against the convicts.

The authorities allege that the suspects set fire to a car owned by the Ministry of Interior with Molotov Cocktails.

BIRD said the trial is flawed, stressing that his conviction is the latest example of how Bahrain's corrupt courts depend on coerced confessions extracted under torture to convict victims of abuse.

BIRD has obtained documents belonging to the public prosecution, which once again, failed to establish forensic evidence linking Sayed Nizar or any of the defendants to the alleged crime. According to the Ministry of Interior's Forensic Labs, both fingerprints and DNA resulted negative.

The Public Prosecution has committed a significant error in its description of Sayed Nizar's latest charges in his prosecution documents. They erroneously reported that on 01 June 2017 Sayed Nizar was a ‘fugitive', and therefore was not interrogated by the Public Prosecution to confirm the alleged crime. In actual fact, Sayed Nizar had been in the custody of the Bahraini Ministry of Interior since 2 March 2017, when he was first arrested.

Arabic Version