Bahraini regime sentences teen to jail as crackdown widens

A court in Bahrain has handed down prison sentences to nine peaceful anti-regime protesters, including a teenager, as the ruling Aal-e Khalifah regime presses ahead with its heavy clampdown on political dissidents and pro-democracy activists in the Persian Gulf island State.

Aal-e Khalifa's controlled Supreme Criminal Court sentenced eight defendants to seven years in prison after convicting them of attacking a police patrol with Molotov cocktails in the town of A'ali, situated about three kilometers southeast of the capital Manama.

A judicial source and activists said the ninth was a minor, who received a three-year jail term.

The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy later named the teenager as 19-year-old Sayed Nizar Alwadaei, adding that he is the brother-in-law of London-based Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, who is the head of the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD).

Sayed Ahmed said lawyers had confirmed to him that his young relative, who is already serving a three-year prison sentence on the charge of planting a fake bomb, was among those convicted.

The UK-based Bahraini activist’s mother-in-law, Hajer Mansoor Hassan, 49, was hospitalized with hypoglycemia on March 22 three days after starting a hunger strike to protest the treatment of inmates at the notorious Isa Town Prison.

Hassan and Medina Ali reportedly ended their hunger strike on Saturday, calling for a halt to ‘humiliating and discriminatory treatment’ at the detention center.

Thousands of anti-regime protesters have held demonstrations in Bahrain on an almost daily basis ever since a popular uprising began in the country in mid-February 2011.

SS