On 24 March, ADHRB has delivered an oral intervention at the United Nation Human Rights Council session 52 under item 6 during the Universal Review Periodic of Bahrain. The Activist Ali Mushaima Said in his intervention: Magnitsky Act must be applied on Bahrain’s MOI.
I am Ali Hasan Mushaima. I am addressing you as a former political prisoner and torture victim. I have been arrested several times since I was fifteen years old.
My father, Mr. Hassan Mushaima, an opposition leader in the 90s, spent six years in prison without trial. He was then repeatedly arrested for his anti-authoritarian political views. In 2011, my father was arrested again, brutally tortured, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Months before that, my brother Mohamed was arrested, and a year after my father’s arrest, my younger brother was arrested.
Three of my cousins have been killed: Ali Mushaima by gunfire, Mohamed Mushaima by the denial of medical treatment in prison, and Sami Mushaima by execution. We are a typical model of families that have been targeted by the Bahraini government.
Although I have been living in London since 2006, this did not save me from being falsely accused and subsequently sentenced to 45 years in prison and having my nationality revoked. Last week, my father, Mr. Hasan Mushaima, who is seventy-five years old, completed twelve years in prison. International organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and UN Special Rapporteurs have repeatedly called for my father’s release, but to no avail.
I present this testimony to you as a miniature example of families who suffer from similar or even greater difficulties in a country that falsely claims to be a country of tolerance and coexistence, a slogan that is extremely offensive because the truth is that the regime can never coexist with others, and there is ample evidence for that such as:
– Demolishing thirty-six Shia mosques as a retaliatory act, even though these mosques did not cause any unrest on the streets.
– Revoking the citizenship of prominent Shia scholars and deporting them.
– Participation of the Al Khalifa regime in the barbaric aggression against Yemen
– Restricting the practice of religious rites, especially in prisons
– Confiscating the research of Dr. Abduljalil Al-Singace on Bahraini dialects and proverbs.
– The heinous and systematic torture of the elderly, children, and women inside prisons, to the extent of sexual assaults and electric shocks, which has led to the death of some victims under the hands of executioners, such as the martyr Karim Fakhrawi, Zakaria Al-Ashiri, Hassan Makki, Ali Saqr, and others.
In light of these facts, I demand the activation of Magnitsky sanctions against those involved in the violations, starting with the Minister of Interior Rashid Al Khalifa, under whose tenure dozens of victims have suffered and the suffering of prisoners continues.
