BEIRUT (Dispatches) – Bahraini courts have convicted and sentenced defendants to death following manifestly unfair trials, based solely or primarily on confessions allegedly coerced through torture and ill-treatment, Human Rights Watch and the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy said in a joint report released Monday.
The 61-page report, “‘The Court is Satisfied with the Confession’: Bahrain Death Sentences Follow Torture, Sham Trials,” based primarily on court records and other official documents, found serious and persistent human rights violations underlying the convictions and death sentences of cases of eight men examined for the report. The men are among 26 who are currently on death row, their appeals exhausted. Trial and appeal courts cavalierly dismissed credible allegations of torture and ill-treatment during interrogation instead of investigating them, as required by international and Bahraini law. The courts routinely violated defendants’ rights to fair trials, including the right to legal counsel during interrogation, the right to cross-examine prosecution witnesses, and through reliance on secretly sourced reports.
“Bahraini officials routinely proclaim that the government respects fundamental human rights, but in case after case, courts relied on coerced confessions despite defendants’ credible claims of torture and ill-treatment,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The many human rights violations that underlie these death sentences reflect not a justice system but a pattern of injustice.”
Bahrain has executed six people since 2017, when the country ended a de facto seven-year moratorium on the death penalty. The 26 men now on death row can be executed once King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa ratifies their sentences.
Each of the eight defendants credibly alleged that their confessions were extracted through torture and ill-treatment. The prosecution and courts failed to investigate these allegations, which in some cases were supported by the findings of physicians. Yet courts summarily concluded that no ill-treatment or abuse had occurred in summary rulings replete with inconsistencies and in some cases contradicted by undisputed evidence.
The Bahraini courts also consistently violated fundamental due process and fair trial rights during the prosecutions. It appears that none of the defendants were allowed to have counsel during interrogations. In at least two cases, defendants were not given access to prosecution evidence used at trial, including, in one instance, a report that relied on secret sources whom the defense could not cross-examine. In another case, the court did not allow the accused to present defense witnesses.
“It is particularly appalling to sentence people to death amid torture allegations and after manifestly unfair trials,” said Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a Human Rights Watch consultant and primary author of the report. “King Hamad should commute all death sentences immediately and the government should reinstate the de-facto moratorium on executions.”
One of the cases involves Zuhair Ebrahim Jasim Abdullah, whom police arrested for his purported involvement in the killing of a police officer. He alleged that interrogators removed all his clothes in an ultimately-aborted attempt to rape him and later threatened to rape his wife. He also alleged that officers used electric shocks on his chest and genitals.