The Bahrainis has marked 5-year anniversary since the executions of Abbas al-Samea (27), Ali al-Singace (21), and Sami Mushaima (47).
The three torture victims were convicted on trumped-up terrorism charges and were put to death by firing squad on January 15, 2017.
The executions, the first in Bahrain since March 1996, sparked a wave of international condemnation.
Rights groups blasted the circumstances surrounding their arbitrary sentencing amid widespread evidence that the trio had not received a fair trial, and the UN described the executions as “extrajudicial killings.”
According to local activists, they were murdered to appease the UAE regime, as their case were linked to the murder of an Emarati officer in 2014, while the GCC states were embedding their security forces in the country.
The Manama regime did not stop there, as it further denied the victims’ families the legal and ethical right to bury them in the graveyard of their choice.
It imposed the location of burial and most of their family members were denied access to the burial rituals.
Besides, just to make sure they did the maximum damage to the helpless families, the regime sent them the blood stained clothes they were murdered in.
Ali al-Singace was only 21, and had been targeted various times as a child. He was only 15 when he was beaten and sexually assaulted then left tied up in a garage as well.
When his case garnered attention, he was told to sign a statement saying that a local rights advocate had attacked him instead of plain clothes police. He was threatened with imprisonment if he refused.
Lawyer of Abbas al-Samea, who was a sport teacher, presented a letter from Al Rawabi School, where he worked, affirming that he was at work at the time of the alleged crime; however, he was severely tortured.
For his part, Sami Mushaima, who took part in the 2011 peaceful uprising demanding basic rights, dignity and freedoms, was arrested multiple times and severely tortured.
While giving a testimony, at the Pearl square, about the horrific torture he was subjected to, he was asked if this will make him stop his activism, to which he replied “Never, not until my death”.
The trend of Death Penalty has sharply exacerbated in Bahrain in the recent years amid the absence of censure from Western allies, namely the US and the UK, whose priority is security and oil not human rights.
Meanwhile, 12 victims of torture, whose sentences were based on confessions that they had retracted in court because they were taken by duress and torture face imminent death in the country.
