Bahrain Mirror (Exclusive): The paradox lies in the fact that within less than 24 hours the Bahraini judiciary issued a 3-year prison term against the drunk Asian bus driver who claimed the life of a Bahraini citizen in an accident, while rejecting a request submitted by the internationally-known human rights defender Nabeel Rajab to change the rest of his prison term in accordance with the Alternative Penalty Law.

The intoxicated driver who went out to a highway without considering the lives of people and the country's law while driving a large bus in traffic, and killed a Bahraini youth (Ali Al-Haddar) distressing his family and nation, was sentenced to only 3 years in prison and ordered to be deported to his country. Meanwhile, the prominent human rights defender Nabeel Rajab is serving a 5-year prison term over a tweet critical of the war on Yemen, since he believes that wars only cause destruction and kill innocent people.

It is a terrible paradox, but it is not as such to the Bahraini judiciary. Bahrainis are used to witnessing the judiciary commuting the sentences of murderers and torturers while harshening verdicts against those who defend human beings and their rights, and reject the killing and disregard of innocent lives. Here are the courts of the regime today, September 17, 2019, refusing to even replace the remainder of Nabeel Rajab's prison term with an alternative penalty pursuant to the Alternative Penalty Law.

Public Prosecutor Ali Al-Buainain has already said that 756 convicts benefited from alternative penalties. These beneficiaries were convicted over cases related to drugs, prostitution, murder, theft and other charges. The court saw that they deserved to serve their sentences outside prison and with people, but sees that prisoners of conscience like Nabeel Rajab deserve to remain in prison, as alternatives punishments don't include him, despite the fact that it is well aware that he doesn't pose any security threat to the community in case he is released, unlike others who have enjoyed these alternative punishments.

The Bahraini authorities don't consider what is committed by the perpetrators, murderers, torturers, or corruptors engaged in theft and waste of public money as risks, thus the courts issue commuted verdicts for them and acquit them sometimes. However, the courts' sentences become harsher and more severe whenever it comes to expression of opinion or criticism of the political situation in the country, whether issued by political activists, human rights defenders, media people or even Twitter users. Even ordinary citizens may face repercussions if they follow an account on Twitter, retweet, comment or even like a post on Twitter and Facebook, in case the account owner is considered a dissident by the authorities or has negative views about the government.

Nabeel Rajab was jailed over two charges; he was accused of "spreading false news and rumors about the internal situation in the Kingdom, undermining the state prestige and status" due to television interviews of his in 2015 and 2016, and was sentenced to two years in prison. He was later sentenced to an additional five years in February 2018 for "spreading false rumors in wartime",  "insulting public authorities" and "insulting a foreign country" over tweets in which he criticized torture in Bahraini prisons and the war in Yemen.

The Bahraini authorities are not only holding Rajab in prison and refusing to replace his sentence, but they have also been practicing an isolation approach against him since his first arrest in 2012 aiming at breaking him and slowly killing him from the inside, as he stated after his first release in 2014. This isolation also continued after his second arrest in 2016 and remains to date. He is the first prisoner to be treated this way, as he is completely isolated from the rest of the inmates on the basis of political issues, and is being held with prisoners convicted of prostitution and others of joining ISIS.

Arabic Version