Habib Toumi

Bahrain’s public prosecutor on Sunday requested the death penalty for 19 men accused of murdering a policeman but acquitted by the High criminal Court in October.

The men had been tried for their alleged role in the death of Majid Asghar Ali Baksh, a 24-year-old Pakistani policeman, in an ambush near Karazakan, a village around 20 kilometres south west of Manama, the capital.

Prosecutors argued that his police patrol car had been showered with Molotov cocktails and stones in April 2008.

However, the suspects have denied the charges and their lawyers contested the evidence against them. Following a long trial the court ruled that there was no evidence against the men and allowed them to go home on October 13. The acquittal was celebrated with great fanfare and amid widely reported scenes of jubilation in Karazakan and other villages. continue reading…

Isa Al Shaiji with parliament Speaker Khalifa Al Dhahrani

Bahrain Journalists Association (BJA) has rejected the draft press law submitted by a parliamentary committee, saying that it failed to meet the aspirations of the media. “We deplore the insistence of the service committee in the lower chamber on a link between the press law and the penal law,” BJA chairman Isa Al Shaiji said. “We resent this link because it makes it possible to imprison journalists. We have repeatedly warned against allowing this link, but the committee did not care about our demands,” he said in a statement ahead of the first parliamentary debate on the draft.

The 40-member lower chamber is scheduled to review the draft on Tuesday amid concerns that it would reinforce controversial articles.

“We want all journalists in Bahrain to head to the parliament on Tuesday to show to the MPs their displeasure with the draft law. We have often said that putting journalists in prison clashed with the reforms launched by King Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa and with the demands of the people working in the media sector,” said Al Shaiji whose association is the main umbrella for hundreds of Bahrain-based journalists. However, sources familiar with the draft said that there has been a “gross misreading of the new text and that the latest amendments gave journalists greater freedom. continue reading…