Bahrain Mirror: Amnesty International said that the new sentencing of prominent human rights defender Nabeel Rajab to five years in prison for peacefully expressing his opinions online illustrates the Bahraini authorities' utter contempt for freedom of expression.

"The conviction of Nabeel Rajab today is a slap in the face to justice. This sentence demonstrates the authorities' ruthless determination to crush all forms of dissent and leaves no room for doubt about the extreme lengths to which they are willing to go to in order to silence peaceful critics," said Heba Morayef, MENA Regional Director at Amnesty International.

"This shameful verdict must be quashed and the authorities must drop all pending charges and immediately release Nabeel Rajab. It is absolutely outrageous that he be forced to spend a further five years in jail simply for daring to voice his opinions online."

Nabeel Rajab, the president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, has been relentlessly harassed for his peaceful human rights work and has been in and out of prison since 2012 on various charges related to his peaceful activism. He has been banned from leaving Bahrain since November 2014.

Nabeel Rajab has been detained since June 2016 and is now serving a two-year prison sentence for TV interviews he gave in 2015 and 2016.

Arabic Version