Bahrain Mirror: The Fourth High Criminal Court, presided over by Ali bin Khalifa Al-Dhahrani with the membership of judges Hamad bin Salman Al Khalifa and Jamal Awad and Ahmad Al-Sulaiman as secretariat, sentenced 27 suspects to five years in prison. It claimed that they forced an Asian truck driver to dump a load of sand on Al-Budai Street after stabbing him with a knife on his leg and hitting a policeman with stone on his knee.

The authorities claimed that around 150 persons headed from Bani Jamra cemetery towards Al-Budai Street to join a protest. They spotted a truck carrying a load of sand, forced him to stop and dump the load in order to block the highway from both sides. When he refused to do so, one of the suspects stabbed him multiple times with a knife on his left thigh and forced him to unload the sand.

The authorities also claimed that the protestors attacked the police- during their crackdown on demonstrations-with Molotov cocktails and iron rods, leaving a policeman injured.

Since 2012, the known riot cases which are listed under the riot act have been amended to apply to the terrorism act, as new terrorist aims and pretexts have been attributed to these cases, such as the attempted murder of policemen, breaching the provisions of law and putting people's lives and properties in danger, in order to harshen the sentences issued against protestors and activists.

Arabic Issue