Bahrain has sentenced 13 “political prisoners” to an additional three years in prison for their 2021 protests against the conditions in which they are being held, human rights groups announced Wednesday.
The London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) said in a statement that the prisoners were sentenced “in a collective trial amid credible allegations of torture.”
The group said the court announced its verdict on Tuesday against 65 defendants, but none of them were present at the meeting, adding that “62 of them are political prisoners.”
The judges sentenced 13 people to an additional three years in prison on top of the sentences they were already serving, and acquitted 52 others, according to the Bird newspaper.
It denounced “serious due process violations, including the right to be present at trial and to have access to an attorney.”
The case in which they were convicted comes in 2021, when hundreds of inmates at Bahrain’s notorious Jaw Prison protested their conditions, including the lack of medical care during the COVID-19 pandemic. go back.
Last month, dozens of prisoners – 121, according to authorities – began a hunger strike, once again protesting the same prison conditions.
They called off their strike in mid-September after the government promised to improve the situation.
“Victims of torture are blamed, while torturers avoid any responsibility,” Saeed Alwaday, BIRD’s advocacy officer, said in a statement.
The Gulf island kingdom has been regularly accused by human rights groups of serious human rights abuses targeting members of the opposition, particularly since its violent crackdown on mass protests in 2011 following the Arab Spring uprisings. has been done.
Bahraini authorities said Wednesday that the prisoners’ legal rights were guaranteed and that the legal proceedings were “carried out in accordance with due process.”
“The incident in question, which occurred at Jau Prison on April 17, 2021, was a planned act of violence by a small but well-organized group of inmates seeking to disrupt the operations of the facility,” prison authorities said in the letter. mentioned in. AFP.
They said that “this incident was clearly not a peaceful sit-in or protest” and that “staff at the facility took appropriate action.”
Following the 2021 prison protests, the United Nations had expressed concern about “unnecessary and disproportionate force” targeting “peaceful sit-ins” at the facilities.
Other prisoners said the sit-in was motivated by the death of an activist due to inadequate medical care.