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Bahrain's civil courts function like military ones in highly politicized cases. Eleven of the charged 21 activists were earlier accused of being part of a "terrorist network" in civil proceedings. They involved 25 opposition activists.
The case was ongoing when unrest began last year. As an early concession to protesters, King Hamad freed 23 of the 25. However, 11 were re-arrested, tried and convicted.
In the "terrorist network" case, defendants were denied the right to counsel and access to trial materials. In addition, inappropriate prejudicial public statements were made against them. Moreover, allegations of torture in detention were whitewashed. According to court minutes, all but one defendant claimed security forces abused them physically and psychologically.
Charges against all were spurious. No evidence whatever proved crimes. An accused cleric was asked about his sermons and "what rights people should have."
Last year, HRW interviewed eight defendants after their release. All said they were tortured and ill-treated. They explained beatings, sleep deprivation, forced prolonged standing, extended isolation in solitary confinement, and other forms of abuse.
Torture extracted confessions used in two civil trials unraveled during proceedings. One case involved two defendants accused of assaulting a pro-government newspaper editor. In fact, the victim said they weren't his assailants. After release, the two men said they were slapped, punched and threatened with electric shocks until confessed to stop pain.
The other case also involved a torture extracted confession. An innocent young man got a year in prison, despite his passport showing he was in Britain at the time of the alleged incident. According to HRW:
"The egregious violations of fair trial rights in the cases presented in this report do not reflect simply poor practices by individual judicial officers, but also serious, systemic problems with Bahrain's criminal justice system as a whole and the role of the military and intelligence services in state oppression.""For this reason, the government should conduct thorough and impartial investigations into the broad range of human rights violations detailed in this report by implicated ministries and agencies, including the Ministry of Interior, the National Security Agency, the Bahrain Defense Force, the Ministry of Justice and Islamic Affairs, and the Public Prosecution Office."
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