Bahrain Mirror: The High Appeals Court upheld a ruling sentencing a suspect, accused in taking part in an assembly and burning a police armored vehicle in Al-Ekr in 2015, to 7 years in jail, after reconsidering the case returned from the cassation court.

The fourth high criminal court issued in May 2016 3-year jail term against the first suspect and 10-year jail term against 6 suspects (from the first till the seventh) and ordered all the suspects to pay the interior ministry 3709 thousand and 820 fils. The fifth defendant appealed the ruling, thus the appeals court commuted his sentence in 2017 to 7 years instead of 10. However, he appealed the ruling in the cassation court in 2017, which in its turn returned the case to the appeals court to reconsider it due to issuing the law of replacing penalties with measure. The appeals court, however, upheld the 7-year jail verdict against him.

International organizations doubt the independency of Bahraini jurisdiction and accuse it of collaborating with the security apparatuses involved in torturing dissidents and fabricating political charges against them since the eruption of anti-government protests in 2011.

Arabic Version