**Update: A Bahraini court of appeals upheld the two-year sentence against Abdulla Jaffar on 23 January 2017, exhausting his appeals process. ____________ 13 January 2016 – The Government of Bahrain has taken 19-year-old Virginia-born Bahraini-American citizen Abdulla Jaffar into custody. This arrest is meant to begin an arbitrary prison sentence passed against Jaffar almost two[…]
From 8 to 19 January, United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, will undertake an official visit to Saudi Arabia to examine Saudi Government’s efforts to combat poverty. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Special Rapporteur will focus on the ways[…]
On 16 January 2017, a Bahraini court will begin hearing the trial of the correspondent for Radio Monte Carlo Doualiya and France24, Nazeeha Saeed, who was was charged on 17 July 2016 with “practicing journalism without a license.” We, the undersigned human rights organizations, condemn the judicial harassment of Saeed for her work as a[…]
On 10 January 2017, Saudi Arabia’s Specialized Criminal Court (SCC) sentenced human rights defender and lawyer Abdulaziz al-Shubaily to eight years in prison followed by an eight-year travel ban. Al-Shubaily is a founding member of the Saudi Association for Civil and Political Rights (ACPRA), which documented human rights abuses in the Kingdom while promoting a[…]
Following yet another postponement in the final days of 2016, the trial of Bahraini scholar and activist Khalil al-Halwachi is now set to enter its twenty-third session on 22 January 2017. He is being tried along with 16 others and has been detained by Bahraini authorities for over two years without being sentenced, in clear[…]