Bahrain handed down life sentences on Monday to 14 men for killing a Pakistani national during pro-democracy protests led by the Gulf kingdom’s Shiite majority earlier this year, state news agency BNA said.
A military court also sentenced 15 others to 15 years in prison each for the attempted murder of a soldier, vandalizing buildings at the University of Bahrain and “inciting hatred of the ruling system,” the agency said.
Another six received 15 years each for intent to murder several people at the university, while a seventh was given 18 years. They were charged with setting a building on fire to kill those on an upper floor.
Bahrain’s Sunni Muslim rulers quashed the protests in March, with the help of troops from fellow Sunni neighbors Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. At least 30 people were killed, hundreds wounded and more than 1,000 detained in the crackdown.
Pakistani national Abdulmalik Ghulam Rasool — killed in March — was assaulted with wooden planks and metal bars as he left his home in Manama, BNA said, adding that the 14 were also charged with intending to cause riots and commit other crimes.
Those jailed in all three cases were convicted for “spreading terror,” BNA said.
The court rejected requests by lawyers in the three cases for an independent medical committee to investigate allegations that the defendants had been tortured, said Mattar Mattar, a member of the largest Shiite opposition group, Wefaq.
“The lawyers said that a lot of the detainees were forced to give confessions,” he said. “This brings the focus on the importance of having a progressive and independent judiciary system in Bahrain.”
The UN said on Friday that sentences handed down to 20 Bahraini doctors followed flawed trials that failed to meet international standards of transparency and due process.
The World Medical Association also condemned as “totally unacceptable” the jail terms imposed by a military court.
A military court sentenced the doctors to jail on Thursday for between five and 15 years for occupation of a medical complex, using ambulances to transport protesters, storing weapons and other charges.
Bahrain faces almost daily protests by Shiites, angry over a crackdown in which thousands lost their jobs and over government reform plans that fall short of giving the parliament full legislative powers.
Last week, a military appeals court upheld life sentences for eight of 21 opposition leaders, rights activists and online activists accused of leading the uprising.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
RSS