Bahrain Mirror: A Bahraini High Appeals Court upheld prison sentences issued by a first degree court against 10 appellants over charges of burning a police patrol vehicle, assembling and having possession of ammunition.

The High Criminal Court had convicted 13 defendants on charges of assembling, attacking a security patrol with Molotov cocktails, causing damages.

The court sentenced the first defendant to the fourth and the sixth to the thirteenth to 10 years in prison, the seventh to 3 years, also fining him 500 BD and the fifth defendant to 3 years as well.

The court claimed that the defendants on August 10, 2014 and September 4, 2014, deliberately set fire to a vehicle owned by the Interior Ministry, along with other unknown suspects, endangering people's lives and properties for a terrorist purpose; joined an assembly of more than 5 persons, aiming at disrupting public security and endangering people's lives and properties; and acquiring and having possession of flammable materials.

Human rights organizations challenge the charges raised against the defendants, since they doubt the independence of the judiciary, whose members are assigned by royal decrees, and since it issues sentences based on confessions extracted under duress and evidence presented by secret investigations and anonymous witnesses.

Arabic Version