From the day he was arrested on June 13, Nabeel Rajab, the president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, has been kept in solitary detention in conditions so squalid that outside observers have verified the “toilet and shower are unclean, unhygienic, and filled with potentially disease-carrying sludge.”

The start of his trial for comments he posted online has been delayed twice: it was scheduled to start on July 12, delayed until August 2, and then on August 2, it was delayed until September 5. No reason was offered regarding this week’s delay, once again.

A request from his lawyers to release him pending the start of the trial has been rejected. Rajab remains in pretrial custody.
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Since he was arrested on June 13, Nabeel Rajab, the president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, has been kept in solitary detention in conditions so squalid that outside observers have verified the “toilet and shower are unclean, unhygienic, and filled with potentially disease-carrying sludge.” His trial for comments he posted online was scheduled to start today, July 12, but at the hearing the judge postponed the start until August 2.

A request from his lawyers to release him pending the start of the trial was rejected. Rajab remains in pretrial custody.

After two weeks in these conditions, Rajab was brought to a hospital in Bahrain with an irregular heartbeat. Blood tests proved that he also has a urinary tract infection and “low mononucleosis,” but he is not receiving medicine for these ailments.

Although he is being kept in solitary confinement, his right to privacy is regularly trampled: any visits from family or his lawyers are attended by Rajab, his family members or lawyers, and two police officers, who sit with Rajab and his visitors.
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One of the inadvertent effects of Bahrain’s current campaign of aggressive repression against those it deems dissidents is the simplest one: Bahrain validates the dissidents, proves their testimonies of brutality, physical and psychological torture, and repression one-hundred percent correct.

Almost two weeks after Nabeel Rajab, the president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, was arrested, he finally learned today what he is charged with: two violations of Bahrain’s penal code, violations of articles 133 and 216, which carry a combined maximum sentence of 13 years in prison. The charges stem from Tweets that he published last year. Tweets. His first hearing will be July 12.

One of the other effects, of course, is this: Bahrain’s campaign of repression stokes dissent, and dissenters become easier to identify, arrest, attempt to silence. Right now, Bahrain is making life dangerous for thousands of people as it places a choke-hold on parts of its population: Shia, human rights activists, those people unlucky enough to not be born in the ruling Al Khalifa family.
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