HRW: Bahrain Justice System Criminal

Local Editor

Human Rights Watch criticized "failures" in Bahrain's justice system Thursday, stressing that it severely punishes pro-reform protesters while offering impunity to abusive security personnel.

"A police officer in Bahrain who kills a protester in cold blood or beats a detainee to death might face a sentence of six months or maybe two years," said HRW deputy Middle East director Joe Stork in a 64-page report.

Meanwhile, "peacefully calling for the country to become a republic will get your life in prison."
The kingdom has been widely criticized over the and for the mistreatment of detainees and crackdown on protesters.

The report stressed that the kingdom's courts maintain a "highly repressive political order."
"Bahrain's problem is not a dysfunctional justice system," Stork emphasized, "but rather a highly functional injustice system."

In November 2011, the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry found that security forces had used "excessive force" and tortured detainees in its month-long crackdown on dissent.
Among other recommendations, it called for reforms in the police and justice systems.
HRW's report criticized "the stark contrast between prosecutions of serious human rights violations by security personnel on the one hand and prosecutions for 'crimes' based on speech and peaceful assembly-related activities on the other."
"Bahrain's problem is not a dysfunctional justice system, but rather a highly functional injustice system," said Stork.

Last October, an appeals court cut from seven years to three the jail terms of two policemen convicted of torturing a detainee to death.
That same month, the jail term of a policeman convicted of shooting dead a protester in 2011 was also reduced from seven years to three.
The policeman was convicted of shooting a protester with birdshot, but the court said the killing was not premeditated.

HRW said Bahrain's allies in London, Washington, and Brussels have failed to press the government to "take serious steps to hold security forces accountable for abuse, or to call openly for the release of high-profile political prisoners."
Authorities in the Gulf kingdom, home to the US Fifth Fleet, have increased penalties for those convicted of violence, introducing the death penalty or life sentences for certain cases.

On Monday, a court jailed four people for life for allegedly blowing up a car in an attempt to disrupt the F1 Grand Prix race in 2013. A fifth man was given 10 years.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team