{"id":17490,"date":"2013-06-21T10:46:14","date_gmt":"2013-06-21T16:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=17490"},"modified":"2013-06-21T10:46:14","modified_gmt":"2013-06-21T16:46:14","slug":"beating-torture-threat-of-rape-precede-bahrain-teens-prison-sentence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=17490","title":{"rendered":"Beating, Torture, threat of Rape, precede Bahrain teen&#8217;s Prison Sentence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Bahraini teen activist faces up to 80 years in prison<\/strong><br \/>\n19 June, 2013 &#8211; Al Akhbar<\/p>\n<p>A Bahraini court sentenced an 18-year-old opposition member, Akbar Ali al-Kishi, to 10 years in prison Wednesday over charges of blowing up gas cylinders, family and activists said, adding that the young activist faces several more decades of imprisonment.<\/p>\n<p>Five others were accused of the same crime and were all handed down a ten-year sentence, Kishi\u2019s father told Al-Akhbar, while one of them was tried in absentia.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey didn\u2019t allow [his mother and I] to be at the court hearing when they gave him the sentence,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>The young activist has already been sentenced to two charges adding up to 16 years prior to Wednesday\u2019s hearing, his father said, and will now have to serve a total of 26 years in prison.<\/p>\n<p>He is currently imprisoned and is facing several other charges in court.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf he is convicted of all the charges accused of him, he will be facing up to 80 years in prison,\u201d Kishi said over a phone interview.<\/p>\n<p>Bahraini authorities repeatedly tortured, beat and insulted Kishi on different occasions and one of the officers threatened to rape him, the Bahraini Center for Human Rights (BCHR) previously reported.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA month and a half ago, they arrested him, tortured him and then forced him to sign a confession to the cylinder crime,\u201d Kishi\u2019s father said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe can only visit him in prison for half an hour, sometimes 10 minutes, and only after a strip search. We cannot bring him anything with us,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p>Kishi had been arrested in 2010, 2012, and 2013 and was avoiding arrest during 2011, Mortada al-Moqdad, an activist close to the case, told Al-Akhbar.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is only an act of revenge against people in the opposition group who did not back down,\u201d Moqdad said.<\/p>\n<p>Kishi was wounded in April 2009 by birdshot pellets and was taken into the hospital in \u201cserious condition,\u201d after Bahraini forces attacked a protest in the village of Sanabis, the BCHR said.<\/p>\n<p>Cases of beatings and torture in Bahraini jails in order to pressure inmates to sign confessions are regularly documented by human rights groups. In 2011, Bahrain security forces led a heavy-handed crackdown against an uprising critical of the ruling Khalifa dynasty.<\/p>\n<p>However, the Gulf kingdom has seen intermittent protests since then.<\/p>\n<p>In April, Bahrain cancelled the visit of the UN envoy on torture, Juan Mendez, for the second time, arousing suspicion.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is effectively a cancellation as no alternative dates were proposed nor is there a future road map to discuss,&#8221; Mendez said. &#8220;This postponement could be perceived as if there is something to hide.&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/english.al-akhbar.com\/content\/bahraini-teen-activist-faces-80-years-prison\" target=\"_blank\"> &#8230;more<\/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%3D17490&amp;text=Beating%2C+Torture%2C+threat+of+Rape%2C+precede+Bahrain+teen%27s+Prison+Sentence&amp;count=horizontal&amp;via=\" style=\"\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bahraini teen activist faces up to 80 years in prison 19 June, 2013 &#8211; Al Akhbar A Bahraini court sentenced an 18-year-old opposition member, Akbar Ali al-Kishi, to 10 years in prison Wednesday over charges of blowing up gas cylinders, family and activists said, adding that the young activist faces several more decades of imprisonment. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=17490#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":[507,4087],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17490"}],"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=17490"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17492,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17490\/revisions\/17492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}