{"id":8188,"date":"2012-04-02T07:13:41","date_gmt":"2012-04-02T14:13:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=8188"},"modified":"2012-04-02T07:13:41","modified_gmt":"2012-04-02T14:13:41","slug":"day-55-of-abdulhadi-al-khawaja-freedom-or-death-hunger-strike-as-court-schedules-appeal-case-for-23-april","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=8188","title":{"rendered":"Day 55 of Abdulhadi al-Khawaja &#8220;freedom or death&#8221; hunger strike as Court schedules Appeal case for 23 April"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Lawyers appeal sentence for Bahrain hunger striker<\/strong><br \/>\n2 April, 2012 &#8211; Associated Press &#8211; AJC<\/p>\n<p>MANAMA, Bahrain \u2014 Lawyers for a Bahraini human rights activist who is on hunger strike and attorneys for 20 other opposition figures appealed their convictions on anti-state charges on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja is serving a life sentence for his role in last year&#8217;s uprising in the Gulf kingdom. Seven other prominent opposition leaders were also sentenced to life imprisonment. Another 12 received lengthy prison sentences in a special security court, which was set up after the country imposed martial law last March to quell political unrest.<\/p>\n<p>Al-Khawaja was arrested in April during a government crackdown on protests staged by the country&#8217;s Shiite majority demanding greater rights from Sunni rulers.<\/p>\n<p>His lawyer Mohammed al-Jaishi said that he and the attorneys for the other 20 leaders appealed their clients&#8217; convictions and sentences during Monday&#8217;s session in Bahrain&#8217;s Court of Cassation.<\/p>\n<p>The attorneys also asked a five-judge panel to free the prisoners on bail \u2014 a request the judges declined, al-Jaishi said.<\/p>\n<p>Another hearing in the case was set for April 23.<\/p>\n<p>The 21 activists were convicted by a special security court in June of participating in efforts to overthrow the ruling dynasty. Of those, seven had been tried in absentia.<\/p>\n<p>Al-Khawaja has been on hunger strike for more than 50 days. He has been refusing food since Feb. 8.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, Amnesty International urged Bahrain to free him because of fears he could die.   <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ajc.com\/news\/nation-world\/lawyers-appeal-sentence-for-1404255.html\" 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%3D8188&amp;text=Day+55+of+Abdulhadi+al-Khawaja+%22freedom+or+death%22+hunger+strike+as+Court+schedules+Appeal+case+for+23+April&amp;count=horizontal&amp;via=\" style=\"\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lawyers appeal sentence for Bahrain hunger striker 2 April, 2012 &#8211; Associated Press &#8211; AJC MANAMA, Bahrain \u2014 Lawyers for a Bahraini human rights activist who is on hunger strike and attorneys for 20 other opposition figures appealed their convictions on anti-state charges on Monday. Activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja is serving a life sentence for his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=8188#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":[2092],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8188"}],"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=8188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8189,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8188\/revisions\/8189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}