On September 1, 2010, the newspaper Al-watan published a long article on an alleged terrorism network, recently uncovered by the Bahraini authorities. Along with the article, Alwatan published pictures of people accused of being part of it or supporting it and notably Mr. Nabeel Rajab, President of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights and FIDH Deputy Secretary General, and Mr. Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja, Middle East Coordinator at Frontline, who are both accused of providing support to the alleged network. They were accused in the articles of being “active in publishing unjust reports” and Mr. Al-Khawaja was more specifically referred to as being “associated with many international organisations using the work on human rights issues as a cover, but focusing on damaging the image of Bahrain in regard to human rights and claiming the decline in the indicators of freedoms based on undocumented statistics that are not updated with actual situation”. On September 3, 2010, Al-Watan published again the names and photos of the two defenders and repeated similar accusations. On September 4, 2010, the national security in co-operation with the Bahrain National News Agency (BNA) published a statement on the alleged terrorist network which mentioned Mr. Rajab as one of the persons officially accused of involvement in said network. The agency removed Mr. Rajab’s name and photo from its statement the following day.
Furthermore, on September, 4, 2010, Mr. Ali Abduleman was summoned to present himself at the NSA Office at 9 pm. Mr. Abduleman, who created in 1999 a news website on Bahrain (www.bahrainonline.org) and a blog, has been active at the international level raising attention to the situation of freedom of expression and the media environment in Bahrain. He was arrested by the Bahraini national security agency (NSA) for allegedly spreading "false news" on his news portal and has been detained incommunicado since then. On September 5, his news website was shut down by the authorities and remains unavailable in Bahrain and from abroad.
According to the information received, within the same context, since August 19, six other human rights defenders have been arrested and remained detained incommunicado pursuant to the anti-terrorism law: Mr. Suhail Al-Shehabi, member of the Committee of the relatives of detainees and the Committee of the Unemployed, Mr. Ahmed Jawad Al-Fardan, member of the Committee of the relatives of detainees in Karzakan, Mr. Ali Jawad Al- Fardan, member of the Committee of the relatives of detainees in Karzakan, Mr. Salman Naji, member of the Committee of the Unemployed, Mr. Abdul Hadi Al-Saffar, Chairman of the Committee against high prices and actively involved in other associations including the Committee of the relatives of detainees and Mr. Hassan Al-Haddad, member of the Committee of the Unemployed.
The Observatory recalls that Messrs. Abduljalil Al-Sengais, Abdulghani Ali Issa Al- Khanjar, Jaffar Al-Hessabi and Mohammed Saeed, remain in detention under terrorism charges and reiterates its condemnation regarding the acts of severe torture that several of them suffered since detention that some of them have allegedly been tortured during interrogation.
In this context, the Observatory fears that the smear campaign merely aims at discrediting Messrs. Rajab and Al-Khawaja’s human rights activities and fears for the moral and physical integrity of all human rights defenders in Bahrain, in particular those who have been arrested since August 15.
The Observatory urges the Bahraini authorities to immediately release Messrs. Abduleman, Abduljalil Al-Sengais, Abdulghani Ali Issa Al-Khanjar, Jaffar Al-Hessabi, Mohammed Saeed, Suhail Al-Shehabi, Ahmed Jawad Al-Fardan, Ali Jawad Al-Fardan, Salman Naji, Abdul Hadi Al-Saffar, and Hassan Al-Haddad, to put an end to any kind of harassment against them and to refrain from hindering activities of promotion and protection of human rights, in line with the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as international and regional human rights instruments ratified by Bahrain.
For further information, please contact:
· FIDH: Fabien Maitre, + 33 1 43 55 14 12
· OMCT: Seynabou Benga, + 41 22 809 49 39