NEW YORK (Dispatches) – The United Nations has expressed distress at the execution of three Shia Muslim activists in Bahrain over their alleged role in killing policemen during a pro-democracy demonstration.
"We are appalled at the execution by firing squad of three men in Bahrain on Sunday,” UN human rights commissioner spokesman Rupert Colville said in a statement.
Colville noted that the defendants’ confessions were supposedly obtained under torture, and that their lawyers were not given access to all the evidence against them nor allowed to cross-examine prosecution witnesses.
"We again urge Bahrain to impose a moratorium on the use of death penalty,” the top UN official said, adding that Manama should work to "abolish the death penalty definitively.”
Colville added there were "serious doubts whether the accused were provided with the right to fair trial.”
On January 15, Bahrain executed Abbas al-Samea, 27, Sami Mushaima, 42, and Ali al-Singace, 21, by firing squad. The killings came a week after the Court of Cassation upheld death sentences against the trio after finding them guilty of killing three policemen, including an Emirati officer, in the northern village of al-Daih back in March 2014.
Anti-regime protesters have taken to the streets on an almost daily basis ever since the popular uprising began in Bahrain in February 2011.
The demonstrators are demanding that the Al Khalifah family relinquish power and let a just system representing all Bahrainis be established.
Scores of people have been killed and hundreds of others wounded or detained amid Manama’s crackdown on dissent and widespread discrimination against the country’s Shia majority.
A video, which has resurfaced on the Internet, shows hooligans ransacking a store while security forces look on and even film the incident without trying to stop the raid.
The video, which was initially released in April 2012, has gone viral in the wake of the Manama regime’s executions of three anti-regime Shia activists.
The video shows some hooligans storming a big supermarket with the support of security forces, while an officer is seen filming the incident and later ordering a thug to break down the CCTV camera.
This as reports say the kingdom has employed 750 mercenaries and hooligans to suppress dissent in the tiny Persian Gulf country.