{"id":17251,"date":"2013-05-01T15:25:55","date_gmt":"2013-05-01T21:25:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=17251"},"modified":"2013-05-01T15:29:19","modified_gmt":"2013-05-01T21:29:19","slug":"bahrain-political-prisoner-crisis-brings-renewed-calls-for-freedom-of-union-leader-mahdi-abu-dheeb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=17251","title":{"rendered":"Bahrain Political Prisoner Crisis brings renewed calls for freedom of Union leader, Mahdi Abu Dheeb"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bahrain: Amnesty renews call to free jailed teachers’ union chief<\/strong>
\n1 May, 2013 – BBC<\/p>\n

Rights group Amnesty International has renewed its call for the release of the jailed president of the Bahrain Teachers Association, Mahdi Abu Dheeb.<\/p>\n

Mr Abu Dheeb was convicted by a military court of plotting to overthrow the government during unrest that swept Bahrain in 2011.<\/p>\n

His original 10-year sentence was subsequently reduced to five on appeal.<\/p>\n

Amnesty has described Mr Abu Dheeb as a “prisoner of conscience”.<\/p>\n

Both Mr Abu Dheeb and his vice-president Jalila al-Salman allege they were tortured in detention after calling for a strike by teachers in March 2011 in support of pro-democracy activists who had taken over a prominent landmark, Pearl Roundabout, in the capital, Manama.<\/p>\n

The Bahrain Teachers Association was dissolved by the government after its leaders were arrested.<\/p>\n

Ms Salman was originally sentenced to three years in jail but that was reduced to six months on appeal.<\/p>\n

However in March this year she was sacked from her teaching job after criticising Bahrain’s human rights record at a conference in Washington DC.<\/p>\n

In a statement timed to coincide with 1 May, International Workers’ Day, Amnesty said: “All that they did was call for a strike in their role as trade union leaders. Mahdi and Jalila were punished for doing their job. This May Day stand with workers across the world and demand Mahdi’s release.”<\/p>\n

Mr Abu Dheeb’s daughter, Maryam, in a recorded message accompanying the statement, said: “Silence is a crime.”<\/p>\n

She urged people to speak up and “take a step and show you care about what is going on in my country”.<\/p>\n

Teachers’ organisations around the world, as well as human rights campaigners, have called for Mr Abu Dheeb’s release.<\/p>\n

The Bahraini authorities did not respond to a request from the BBC to comment on the Amnesty International statement. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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Bahrain: Amnesty renews call to free jailed teachers’ union chief 1 May, 2013 – BBC Rights group Amnesty International has renewed its call for the release of the jailed president of the Bahrain Teachers Association, Mahdi Abu Dheeb. Mr Abu Dheeb was convicted by a military court of plotting to overthrow the government during unrest 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":[1935],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17251"}],"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=17251"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17253,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17251\/revisions\/17253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}