{"id":15537,"date":"2013-01-11T16:17:56","date_gmt":"2013-01-11T23:17:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=15537"},"modified":"2013-01-11T16:17:56","modified_gmt":"2013-01-11T23:17:56","slug":"bahrains-revolution-of-bravery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=15537","title":{"rendered":"Bahrain’s Revolution of Bravery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bahrain: Rights activist Maryam Alkhawaja risks arrest<\/strong>
\nBy Bill Law – BBC – 11 January, 2012<\/p>\n

A leading Bahraini human rights activist has returned to Bahrain to see her jailed father.<\/p>\n

Maryam al-Khawaja, the daughter of Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, flew into the capital Manama on Friday night.<\/p>\n

She risks arrest under the country’s strict laws governing criticism of the king on social media sites.<\/p>\n

Her father was convicted last year in military court of plotting to overthrow the government and sentenced to life imprisonment.<\/p>\n

Ms al-Khawaja, who has a Danish passport, has campaigned tirelessly outside the country on behalf of her father and against the government of King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifah.<\/p>\n

The gulf island kingdom has been wracked by more nearly two years of anti-government protests that have left more than 60 people dead.<\/p>\n

International human rights organisations have protested vigorously over Abdulhadi al-Khawaja’s conviction and that of 19 others who were sentenced to varying terms up to life imprisonment.<\/p>\n

They were convicted of the attempt to forcefully overthrow the government, violations of the constitution and legal code, and ties to foreign terrorist organisations.<\/p>\n

But lawyers acting for the convicted men told the BBC that confessions were obtained under torture, a charge that was confirmed in November 2011 by an independent tribunal appointed by the king.<\/p>\n

On arrival at the airport, Ms al-Khawaja was given a two-week visa. She left with members of her family.<\/p>\n

She has said she wants to visit her father who last year staged a 110-day hunger strike in protest at his detention.<\/p>\n

However a Bahraini human rights activist who asked not to be named told the BBC he was fearful that she would find herself serving a lengthy jail term.<\/p>\n

“She could be charged over her tweets against the king and serve five years under a new law that was passed in December,” he said.<\/p>\n

Ms al-Khawaja’s sister Zainab, who lives in Bahrain, has been detained repeatedly by authorities in the last year and has another court appearance later in the month for participating in illegal demonstrations.<\/p>\n

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Bahrain: Rights activist Maryam Alkhawaja risks arrest By Bill Law – BBC – 11 January, 2012 A leading Bahraini human rights activist has returned to Bahrain to see her jailed father. Maryam al-Khawaja, the daughter of Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, flew into the capital Manama on Friday night. She risks arrest under the country’s strict laws governing 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":[708],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15537"}],"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=15537"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15539,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15537\/revisions\/15539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}