12th December 2013

BAHRAIN MEDIA ROUNDUP

'Come and kill us': Constitutions and necropolitics from Egypt to Bahrain
The hand-written sign held up in a Facebook photo summed it up perfectly: "Free Nabeel Rajab and Alaa Abdel Fattah." Rajab is the founder of the Bahrain Center For Human Rights,!and is in the middle of serving a multi-year prison sentence (the exact term has uctuated as the government has added and then subtracted extra time) because of his unsparing and apparently impolitic advocacy for democracy and human rights in his country. Abdel Fattah is the son and sibling of well-known human rights activists. His father helped found theHisham Mubarak Law Center![Ar], and his sister, Mona Seif, is a founder of the No to Military Trials![Ar]!movement. Read More all charges against Khalil Almarzooq,!!leading opposition politician and former Deputy Speaker of Parliament. On 8 December 2013, Pete Weatherby QC, a member of the UK Bar Human Rights Committee who planning a visit that included acting as an international observer to the coming trial of Khalil Almarzooq, was refused entry into Bahrain and immediately deported after arriving at the Manama airport. This incident further casts doubt about the Bahraini authorities willingness to ensure a fair legal judicial process. ! Read More

Gulf chill over UK fighter sales

If there were any remaining doubts that arms sales take precedence over human rights or concerns about exacerbating regional tensions, the British government has been unashamedly quashing them. UK prime minister David Cameron and his defence secretary Philip Hammond

have been busy trying to persuade the rulers of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to buy British Typhoon jets, following the example of Saudi Arabia and Oman. The Saudis, the UK's largest arms customer, have bought 72 Typhoons, and the Omanis 12 in a deal backed by a UK government guaranteed loan of 2bn. Read More

NPWJ, NRPTT, Freedom House, PGA and other NGOs call on Bahrain to drop all charges against Khalil Almarzooq
On the day of the third trial hearing in the case of Khalil Almarzooq, No Peace Without Justice and the Nonviolent Radical Party, Transnational and Transparty, together with Freedom House, Parliamentarians for Global Action and other international and Bahraini NGOs are releasing a joint statement calling on the Bahraini authorities to drop