Bahrain activist Nabeel Rajab loses final appeal against imprisonment

Bahraini activist Nabeel Rajab has lost his last appeal against a prison sentence for his previous Twitter activities.

2 min read

31 December, 2018

Rajab was a leading figure in the 2011 protests against the Gulf state's monarchy [Getty]

Bahrain's Supreme Court, whose verdicts are final, Monday upheld a five-year jail term against prominent activist Nabeel Rajab for writing tweets deemed offensive to the state, a judicial source said.

Rajab, a high-profile rights activist who is already serving a two-year term in another case, was first handed the sentence in February by a lower court and an appeals court confirmed it in June.

The Supreme Court's verdicts are final and cannot be challenged.

Rajab, a leading figure in the 2011 protests against the Gulf state's Sunni-led monarchy, was convicted of insulting the state by "deliberately disseminating", false and malicious news on social media.

He was also convicted of criticising the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen and publicly offending a foreign country, a reference to Saudi Arabia.

The court convicted him of endangering Bahrain's military operations in Yemen.

Manama is part of the Saudi-led coalition that has been fighting the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels since March 2015.

He also tweeted criticism of the Bahraini government's treatment of prisoners.

In January this year, the same court upheld a two-year imprisonment against Rajab after convicting him of press statements critical to the government.

Bahrain, with a large Shia community, is located between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran and has been ruled for more than two centuries by the al-Khalifa dynasty.

Authorities have jailed dozens of high-profile activists and disbanded both religious and secular opposition groups since Shia-led protests demanding political change erupted in 2011.

They have stripped hundreds of those convicted of their citizenship, leaving many stateless.