BahrainHuman Rights

Zionist Bahraini regime extends detention of prominent rights activist Nabeel Rajab

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The Bahraini regime has extended by two weeks the detention period of prominent human rights activist Nabeel Rajab for the second time this month.

In a statement, the prosecutor’s office “ordered that he remain detained for 15 days” pending conclusion of more inquiry, the official BNA news agency reported on Sunday.

According to the statement, Rajab is charged with “spreading tendentious rumors” about Bahrain’s participation in the Saudi aerial offensive against Yemen and “attacking a state institution.”

It also accused the activist of posting online “edited footage from television broadcasts on events in Syria and Palestine, unrelated to military operations in Yemen.”

Rajab’s family, however, say he was arrested on April 2 for allegedly posting comments on Twitter denouncing torture in a regime detention center where Shia activists are held.

Bahrain first extended Rajab’s period of detention for 15 days on April 11.

Rajab, the director of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and a co-founder of the [Persian] Gulf Center for Human Rights, was sentenced in January to six months in prison for posting tweets deemed critical of the Al Khalifa regime. He is awaiting the result of an appeal in that case, expected on May 4.

Meanwhile, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders has reported that Rajab is currently being kept in solitary confinement in an unclean cell while being denied access to newspapers.

The international rights group added that Rajab is targeted by the Bahraini regime solely for his human rights activities.

Rajab has been regularly targeted by the Bahraini regime since anti-regime protests broke out against the ruling Al Khalifa dynasty in the Persian Gulf country in early 2011.

Scores of peaceful protesters have been killed and hundreds of others injured and arrested in the crackdown on the almost daily demonstrations.

Rajab spent two years in prison from mid-2012 to mid-2014.

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