Bahraini courts give prison sentences to over dozen anti-regime activists

Courts in Bahrain have handed down prison sentences to more than a dozen Shia protesters as the ruling Al Khalifah regime does not shy away from its heavy clampdown on political dissidents and pro-democracy activists in the tiny Gulf kingdom.

Courts in Bahrain have handed down prison sentences to more than a dozen Shia protesters as the ruling Al Khalifah regime does not shy away from its heavy clampdown on political dissidents and pro-democracy activists in the tiny Gulf kingdom.

On Sunday, Bahraini judiciary officials sentenced 13 defendants to five years in jail each after finding them guilty of “deliberately setting fire to a police patrol car and holding unlawful gatherings in the northern village of Abu Saiba,”  the Arabic-language Lualua television network reported.

Separately, Bahrain’s Supreme Court of Appeal upheld a 15-year prison term against a defendant on trumped-up charges of stealing a car and then setting it ablaze with a gas cylinder back in 2014.

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR), in a statement released on November 13, announced that law courts have issued death sentences against 32 Shia figures since 2011, of which three have been carried out, seven have been commuted to life imprisonment and two others been appealed.