Bahrain court upholds jail sentence for rights activist

By Ahmed al-Masri

DOHA, Qatar

A Bahraini appeals court on Wednesday upheld a two-year prison term handed down earlier against a prominent rights activist, according to local media and the activist’s own Twitter account.

In July, Nabil Rajab, 53, was slapped with two years behind bars for “disseminating false news, statements and rumors about the kingdom's internal situation".

"The court of appeal upheld the [July] sentence against Rajab," read a Wednesday tweet on the activist’s Twitter account, which is run by his close associates.

According to the same Twitter account, Rajab was slapped with the two-year jail term after declaring in recent televised interviews that Bahrain was “preventing human rights organizations and the international press from entering [Bahraini capital] Manama”.

Several local media outlets, including Bahraini dailies Al-Ayyam and Al-Khaleej News, confirmed Wednesday’s court verdict, which is still subject to appeal before the Court of Cassation, Bahrain’s highest appellate court.

Rajab was arrested in June of last year, less than a year after Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa pardoned him -- for "health reasons" -- after he had been slapped with an earlier six-month jail term for “insulting” two government ministries in a tweet.

A prominent rights activist and head of the now-suspended Bahraini Center for Human Rights, Rajab is also a member of the New York-based Human Rights Watch’s advisory board for the Middle East and North Africa.