Bahrain Mirror: The Bahraini government-affiliated National Institute for Human Rights (NIHR) praised the UK Foreign Office's report on Human Rights and Democracy for 2016 on Bahrain. It said that the report "described Bahrain as the most advanced state in the region in human rights reforms."

Commenting on some of the content of the British report, the NIHR said that it followed up Nabeel Rajab's case, and that a delegation from the institute attended his trial.

Moreover, it said it followed up the trial of 3 clerics, among them Sheikh Isa Qassim, accused of illegal money laundering.

The NIHR claimed that the procedures of this trial are in line with legal guarantees, stating that the judiciary granted the defendants the right to appeal within the legal timeframe, during which the defendants did not appeal.

On the level of citizenship revocation, the NIHR justified those actions as being in accordance with the Bahraini constitution.

The institute said that it attended the administrative trial of Al-Wefaq Society, which ended with a verdict ruling the dissolution of the society, namely for violating law number 26 of 2006, pertinent to political associations.

Furthermore, the NIHR believed that the UK Foreign officer report shouldn't have commented on verdicts in certain procedural cases, out of respect for the independence and sovereignty of the judiciary.

Arabic Version