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Bahrain Court Postpones Human Rights Defender Nabeel Rajab's Case to April 15

· Written by Amira Al Hussaini

Categories: Middle East & North Africa, Bahrain, Breaking News, Censorship, Freedom of Speech, Human Rights, Advox
Nabeel Rajab, from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 2.0) [1]

Nabeel Rajab, from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 2.0)

A Bahrain court today [March 15, 2015] postponed its verdict in an appeal made by leading Bahraini human rights defender Nabeel Rajab against a six-month prison sentence [2] until April 15.

The case concerns comments [3] he made about ISIS [3] on Twitter. Rajab was initially convicted of “denigrating an official body” in tweets that likened Bahrain's security apparatus to an “incubator” for fighters of the radical group ISIS.

Rajab, who heads the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights [4] — not recognised as a legal entity by the government — was only released from prison in May 2014 after serving two years for “disrupting the public order [5].”

That sentence came after Rajab was arrested for trying to investigate human rights violations that took place during Bahrain's popular uprising [6] in 2011.

The tweet for which he was convicted suggested that Bahrain's security institutions had a number of staff that had joined terrorist groups, including ISIS.

Following today's hearing, Rajab tweeted to his 260K followers on Twitter:

The court has postponed its verdict in the Twitter case hearing, which was supposed to be made today, until April 15, while continuing to ban me from travel

Index on Censorship remarked: