Category Archives: Bahrain

‘Illegal’ extradition of Bahraini dissident from Serbia calls Interpol’s role into question

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Abuse of the policing body’s ‘red notice’ system is blamed as an activist is forced to return to life in prison in the Gulf state

Marko Štambuk arrived at Belgrade district prison on a Monday morning in late January, only to be told his client was no longer inside. “Immediately I knew something had happened,” he said.

Štambuk, a lawyer, had spent the previous Friday frantically obtaining an injunction from the European court of human rights (ECHR) demanding Serbian authorities halt the extradition of his client, Ahmed Jaafar Mohamed Ali, a Bahraini dissident. This banned the Serbian authorities from extraditing Ali until late February, and warned them that doing so would constitute a rare breach of the European convention on human rights.

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Serbia extradites Bahraini dissident in cooperation with Interpol

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Move comes despite European court of human rights injunction saying that it should be postponed

Serbian authorities have extradited a Bahraini dissident in cooperation with Interpol despite an injunction by the European court of human rights, in the first test for the international policing organisation under the presidency of a top Emirati security official.

Authorities in Belgrade approved the extradition of Ahmed Jaafar Mohamed Ali to Bahrain earlier this week. Days earlier the ECHR had issued an injunction saying the extradition should be postponed until after 25 February to allow Serbian authorities time to provide more information to the court, which was responding to a request by the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights to consider Ali’s case.

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Trump’s Peace review: dysfunction and accord in US Israel policy

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Barak Ravid has written a fascinating account of four chaotic years in which some progress was nonetheless made

Trump’s Peace is a blockbuster of a book. Barak Ravid captures the 45th president saying “Fuck him” to Benjamin Netanyahu and reducing American Jews to antisemitic caricatures. Imagine the Republican reaction if Barack Obama had done that. Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham would plotz. But Trump? Crickets.

Ravid also delivers a mesmerizing tick-tock of the making of the Abraham Accords, the normalization of Israel’s relations with four non-neighboring Arab states.

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Bahraini hunger striker in London told by MPs they will take up case

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MPs promise to raise situation of Ali Mushaima’s father, Hassan, who has been detained in Bahrain for 10 years

A Bahraini man whose father has been detained for 10 years in the Gulf country will end a 23-day hunger strike outside Bahrain’s embassy in London on Friday after MPs vowed to raise his father’s case in the Commons.

Ali Mushaima said he was suffering from back pain and had found the cold nights on a pavement outside the embassy “tough to take”.

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Has Interpol become the long arm of oppressive regimes?

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Once used in the hunt for fugitive criminals, the global police agency’s most-wanted ‘red notice’ list now includes political refugees and dissidents

Flicking through the news one day in early 2015, Alexey Kharis, a California-based businessman and father of two, came across a startling announcement: Russia would request a global call for his arrest through the International Criminal Police Organization, known as Interpol.

“Oh, wow,” Kharis thought, shocked. All the 46-year-old knew about Interpol and its pursuit of the world’s most-wanted criminals was from novels and films. He tried to reassure himself that things would be OK and it was just an intimidatory tactic of the Russian authorities. Surely, he reasoned, the world’s largest police organisation had no reason to launch a hunt for him.

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‘We wanted to make history’: Michael Jackson’s bizarre year in Bahrain

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In 2005, a Bahraini prince welcomed the deposed king of pop and wrote a Hurricane Katrina charity single with him. But Jackson’s erratic behaviour sent plans off course

Omar Shaheen remembers the moment well. In early 2005, the young Bahraini was driving when he received a surreal job offer: the chance to work with Michael Jackson. “It was totally out of left field,” he recalls. “It is a pinch-yourself kind of moment when you get a call to say you’re going to be working with someone who you idolise and is the biggest superstar of all time.”

The request came from Sheikh Abdulla bin Hamad al-Khalifa, the second son of the king of Bahrain, who asked Shaheen to set up a state-of-the art recording studio on his grounds in anticipation of the star’s arrival. “There are so many adjectives to use,” Shaheen says of what was to unfold. “It was bizarre. It was crazy.”

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Tory donor’s oil firm admits employees paid bribes to get contracts

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Petrofac made admission as part of deal to end four-year corruption investigation by Serious Fraud Office

A multinational oil firm, which was led by a major Conservative donor, has admitted that its employees paid bribes to land contracts, as it struck a deal to end a corruption investigation into the company.

The admission was announced by the firm, Petrofac, on Friday to settle a four-year corruption and money laundering investigation by the Serious Fraud Office.

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Phones of nine Bahraini activists found to have been hacked with NSO spyware

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Researchers say bloggers and members of secular leftwing political group among the victims

The mobile phones of nine Bahraini activists, including two who were granted asylum protection and are now living in London, were hacked between June 2020 and February 2021 using NSO Group spyware, according to new findings by researchers at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto.

A report due to be released on Tuesday will reveal that the hacked activists, some of whose phones were being monitored by Citizen Lab researchers at the time they were hacked, include three members of Waad, a secular leftwing political group that was suspended in 2017 amid a crackdown on peaceful dissent in Bahrain.

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Bahraini prisoners allege brutal crackdown in response to Covid protest

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Authorities deny reports that inmates were beaten after a 10-day sit-in over concerns about virus spread and lack of medical care

In early April, inmates at Bahrain’s Jau prison crowded into the corridors to protest. They were angry about a lack of medical treatment and fearing for their lives after the death of another inmate. Their sit-in at building 13 lasted 10 days, and spread to other blocks in Jau, an infamous prison complex in the south of the kingdom.

Inmates claim authorities regularly delay or deny vital medical care to prisoners – especially prisoners of conscience. The concern has grown since late March when Covid-19 began to tear through the prison system. Prisoners and rights groups claim authorities failed to prevent the outbreak and have denied some inmates their choice of vaccine.

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How the Arab spring engulfed the Middle East – and changed the world

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An era of uprisings, nascent democracy and civil war in the Arab world started with protests in a small Tunisian city. The unrest grew to engulf the Middle East, shake authoritarian governments and unleash consequences that still shape the world a decade later

A decade ago this month, protests forced Tunisia’s authoritarian president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, to flee his country. It was a quick and relatively peaceful revolution, coming after decades of stagnant but entrenched regimes across the Arab world.

Few at the time understood the power of the images of unrest being broadcast online and into homes across the Middle East. Within weeks, other significant protest movements would emerge, and by the middle of 2011, leaders in Cairo, Tripoli, Sana’a, Damascus and elsewhere were under serious pressure or had been swept away by a tidal wave of peaceful demonstrations and armed resistance.

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UK trained military of 15 countries with poor human rights records

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Campaigners seek inquiry into whether skills gained in UK were used to commit abuses in countries such as Bahrain, China and Saudi Arabia

The UK government has trained the armies of two-thirds of the world’s countries, including 15 it has rebuked for human rights violations.

An anti-arms trade organisation has called for an investigation into the use of UK military training by other countries to determine whether it has been used to perpetrate human rights abuses.

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Arab states agree to end three-year boycott of Qatar

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Reconciliation with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE includes a non-aggression pact

A three-year boycott of Qatar by four other Middle Eastern countries that disfigured Gulf cooperation and raised concerns in the west about a strengthened regional role for Iran and Turkey has come to a stuttering close.

“The kingdom is happy to welcome you,” Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman said as he greeted Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, on the tarmac of the airport in Al-Ula, north of Medina, on Tuesday.

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‘Vaccine diplomacy’ sees Egypt roll out Chinese coronavirus jab

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A lack of trial data transparency from China has raised concerns, but the country is confidently pushing ahead

When Egypt’s health ministry sent out an invitation to doctors to be vaccinated against Covid-19, they neglected to make clear it was a clinical trial.

Instead, it assured them that two Covid-19 vaccines developed by China’s National Biotec Group, part of a state-owned conglomerate known as Sinopharm, had no side-effects and that “the minister of health was vaccinated today, and orders were issued to vaccinate all doctors and workers who wish to be vaccinated”.

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Trump’s flurry of dodgy deals will not bring the Middle East any peace

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The outgoing US president has his eyes on a Saudi Arabia-Israel accord – no matter who gets hurt

Peace deals that entrench injustice, punish the weak and are propelled by greed, blackmail and weapons sales have precious little to do with peace – and are unlikely to endure. Yet the Middle East has witnessed a recent spate of such dodgy deals. All concern Israel and all were hastily cobbled together by the White House. As his curtailed presidency grinds to an unlamented close, Donald Trump appears engaged in a frantic foreign policy fire sale.

Peace is always a welcome prospect – but never at any price. Trump’s horse-trading on Israel’s behalf has made a cruel mockery of Palestinian rights. By agreeing to normalise relations with Israel, the UAE and Bahrain broke with the 2002 Arab peace plan that makes recognition conditional on the creation of a viable, independent Palestinian state. The deal was sweetened with offers of advanced US weapons and money-spinning business and trade opportunities.

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Breakthrough in Qatar dispute after ‘fruitful’ talks to end conflict

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Saudi prince hails progress in negotiations brokered by Kuwait and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner

A breakthrough in the three-and-a-half-year dispute between Qatar and its neighbouring Gulf states appears to have been achieved following what were described as “fruitful” talks to resolve the conflict.

The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, said “significant progress” had been reached in the last few days and he was optimistic all countries were close to finalising a resolution.

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F1 has ‘massive’ problem to address over human rights, says Lewis Hamilton

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  • Bahrain’ regime has been accused of sportswashing
  • ‘As a sport we need to do more,’ says world champion

Lewis Hamilton has insisted that Formula One has a “consistent and massive” problem it must address with human rights abuses in countries it visits. The world champion was speaking in Bahrain which has been accused of sportswashing, torture and oppression this week and is to host the first of two consecutive races this weekend.

This week Hamilton was asked to address the issue in letters sent to him by three Bahraini citizens alleging they had been victims of oppression and torture by the Bahraini authorities. He said he would be considering their content in detail in the forthcoming days but was unequivocal that F1 had to make steps to address human rights abuses in the countries it visits.

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Saudi heir and Jared Kushner inch kingdom towards deal with Israel

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Saudi Arabia’s interventions could result in seismic shift in region’s geopolitics

As the UAE and Bahrain prepared to sign a deal to normalise diplomatic relations with Israel this summer, Saudi Arabia – the regional heavyweight – was quietly urging them on.

For several months before the deals were signed at the White House, the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, had been laying out his rationale for a pact that would overturn regional policies towards a long-term foe.

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Trump’s pre-election diplomatic offensive glosses over awkward realities

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The ‘Abraham accords’ merely make public once-furtive friendships between Israel and Gulf monarchies, while bigger problems remain

The White House was festooned with the flags of four nations. There were trumpet blasts, multiple signatures on various pieces of paper, and much weighty talk about blood and history – everything you might expect from a peace deal.

And not just any peace deal. The agreements signed in Washington on Tuesday were titled the Abraham Accords, implying a epochal reconciliation between Judaism, Islam and Christianity, three faiths with shared Middle East ancestry.

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‘It’s going to be peace in the Middle East’: Trump on historic accords – video

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A historic agreement signed between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain at the White House will, according to Donald Trump, ‘be peace to the Middle East.’

They signed agreements to establish formal relations, ending a decades-old taboo in Arab diplomacy as power and priorities shift in the region.

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UAE, Bahrain and Israel sign historic accords at White House event

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Trio establish formal relations at ceremony viewed as image boost for Trump and Netanyahu

Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have signed agreements to establish formal relations, ending a decades-old taboo in Arab diplomacy as power and priorities shift in the Middle East.

“Today’s signing sets history on a new course,” Donald Trump told a crowd outside the White House where the deal was signed. “This an incredible day for the world,” he said.

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