Profiles in Persecution: Sadeq Abdali AlAsfoor

Sadeq Abdali AlAsfoor is a 27-year-old Bahraini citizen who is being arbitrarily detained in Bahrain’s Jau Prison. Bahraini authorities subjected him to physical and mental torture from the moment of his arrest, including denial of medical care. Officers from the Ministry of Interior and officers in plain clothing and masks surrounded Sadeq’s neighborhood with Jeeps[…]

Profiles in Persecution: Hesham Abduljalil AlSabbagh

Hesham Abduljalil AlSabbagh, former spokesperson of the now-dissolved Islamic Action Society (Amal) and counselor to its Secretary-General Mohammed Ali Mahfouz, was arrested in Bahrain in April 2013. Since then, he has been disappeared, tortured, and convicted on politically-motivated charges. He currently remains in Jau Prison, where he is routinely denied access to medical care. Amal was[…]

United Nations Special Procedures Complaint Program

Background Information In October 2013, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) began a program to help raise awareness for cases of individuals who have been victims of human rights abuses in Bahrain or the broader Gulf region. Through this program, ADHRB is able to complain on behalf of the individual victims to[…]

UN Experts: Mass Trial in Bahrain Violated Human Rights – Torture, Enforced Disappearances, and Unfair Trials

On 5 November 2018, five UN rights experts published an allegation letter concerning the unfair mass trial of 138 Bahraini citizens for their alleged involvement in a terror cell, named the Zulfiqar Brigades by the government. In the letter, the experts, the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges[…]

Profiles in Persecution: Osama Nezar AlSagheer

Osama Nezar AlSagheer is a 20-year-old Bahraini student who was most recently arrested in 2017 during the suppression of peaceful protests in Duraz, which concerned the denaturalization of Shia religious figure Sheikh Isa Qassim. The sit-in around Sheikh Isa Qassim’s home in Duraz began on 20 June 2016, and the Bahraini authorities’ violent dispersion of[…]