15 NGOs: Dear Obama: Al-Khawaja Must Be Released Immediately
 

09-04-12 11:06 PM

http://bahrainrights.hopto.org/BCHR/...04/khawaja.jpg
09 April 2012
In a letter sent to President Obama, the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), along with fourteen other nongovernmental organizations including Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, Amnesty International, the Foreign Policy Initiative, and Physicians for Human Rights, has urged the U.S. government to press for the immediate and unconditional release from prison of Bahraini human rights defender and democracy activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja.
Al-Khawaja was sentenced to life in prison last year in a Bahraini military court’s group-trial of 21 activists and human rights defenders for offenses related to their role in mass peaceful demonstrations in February and March 2011. On a hunger strike for 61 days, al-Khawaja is now said to be in “critical condition” and “at-risk of organ failure.” International organizations as well as the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) determined that al-Khawaja’s trial met neither international standards nor Bahrain’s own criminal code on due process. Last week, he was transferred to a prison hospital in Manama for round-the-clock monitoring of his condition as a result of the hunger strike. No one, including his lawyers, has been allowed to contact al-Khawaja since Saturday, causing even greater concern for his condition. Al-Khawaja was previously hospitalized in April 2011 with a cracked jaw and skull, resulting from torture and severe ill-treatment while in detention.
Despite repeated pledges by Bahraini authorities to release those imprisoned for exercising their right to freedom of expression, the Bahraini government has continually refused to release al-Khawaja. Late last week, the Danish government—with whom al-Khawaja holds dual-citizenship—asked for the Bahraini government to extradite al-Khawaja to Denmark. The Bahraini government refused the request on Sunday, saying that an extradition to Denmark required “specific conditions…that did not apply to Abdulhadi al-Khawaja’s case.”
Bahrain's largest opposition movement, Al-Wefaq, has repeatedly urged the international community to intervene and press for al-Khawaja’s release. Hundreds of people demonstrated in Bahrain on Friday demanding his release, and Abdulhadi’s daughter, Zeinab al-Khawaja, was arrested twice over the weekend while attempting to see her father in the hospital.
“As one of the Bahrain’s most important external allies, the U.S. government should use this close bilateral relationship to press the Bahraini government for the immediate release of al-Khawaja,” says Stephen McInerney, Executive Director of the Project on Middle East Democracy. “Al-Khawaja's potential death in custody would not only be an avoidable human tragedy, but would likely also spark enormous anger and widespread, potentially violent protests that would have a destabilizing effect on the country as a whole.”
Click here for the full text of the letter


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