{"id":14729,"date":"2012-12-11T09:53:35","date_gmt":"2012-12-11T16:53:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=14729"},"modified":"2012-12-11T09:53:35","modified_gmt":"2012-12-11T16:53:35","slug":"bahrain-regime-maintains-unjustice-detention-of-nabeel-rajab","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=14729","title":{"rendered":"Bahrain Regime maintains unjustice detention of Nabeel Rajab"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Bahrain activist Nabeel Rajab&#8217;s prison sentence reduced<\/strong><br \/>\n11 December, 2012 &#8211; BBC<\/p>\n<p>An appeals court in Bahrain has reduced the prison sentence handed to prominent human rights activist Nabeel Rajab from three years to two.<\/p>\n<p>The court upheld Mr Rajab&#8217;s conviction of encouraging &#8220;illegal gatherings&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>His lawyer, Mohammed al-Jishi, told AP news agency that he had been cleared of a charge of insulting police.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Rajab, head of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, has been a leader of the pro-democracy protests which have rocked the kingdom since February 2011.<\/p>\n<p>The 48-year-old is also one of the most well-known activists in the Arab world, with more than 185,000 followers on Twitter.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Rajab&#8217;s wife, Sumaya, said she had spoken to him briefly in court on Tuesday after the appeal against his conviction was rejected.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He told me he was not expecting two years. He was thinking that they would release him,&#8221; she told the BBC.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Rajab was originally sentenced to a year on each of three identical charges but in two cases the sentences were cut in half.<\/p>\n<p>Joe Stork of Human Rights Watch called the decision &#8220;bizarre&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The Bahraini judiciary is extremely politicised,&#8221; he said, noting the pressure that international human rights groups have put on the government to release Mr Rajab and other political prisoners.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They gave an inch to international concern but Nabeel Rajab is still facing two years in jail, punished for exercising his right to freedom of association.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>On Sunday, US Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner urged the authorities to &#8220;drop charges against all persons accused of offenses involving non-violent political expression and freedom of assembly&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The next day, another activist, Zainab al-Khawaja, was sentenced a month in prison for entering the &#8220;prohibited area&#8221; of the former site of Manama&#8217;s Pearl Roundabout &#8211; the focus of last year&#8217;s unrest.   <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-middle-east-20679191\" target=\"_blank\">&#8230;source<\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"igit_tsb_button\" style=\"float: left; margin-right: 10px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/share?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crookedbough.com%2F%3Fp%3D14729&amp;text=Bahrain+Regime+maintains+unjustice+detention+of+Nabeel+Rajab&amp;count=horizontal&amp;via=\" style=\"\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bahrain activist Nabeel Rajab&#8217;s prison sentence reduced 11 December, 2012 &#8211; BBC An appeals court in Bahrain has reduced the prison sentence handed to prominent human rights activist Nabeel Rajab from three years to two. The court upheld Mr Rajab&#8217;s conviction of encouraging &#8220;illegal gatherings&#8221;. His lawyer, Mohammed al-Jishi, told AP news agency that he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=14729#more-'\" class=\"more-link\">more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[2095],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14729"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14730,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14729\/revisions\/14730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}