Head of BICI Slams Bahrain Reforms

Photo Credit: Reuters/Denis Balibouse

After the Bahraini government released its latest assessment of BICI implementation, head of the BICI M. Cherif Bassiouni harshly critiqued the Bahraini government’s reform progress in a release from Human Rights Watch. “A number of recommendations on accountability were either not implemented or implemented only half-heartedly,” he said. Bassiouni added, “The public prosecution has yet to investigate over 300 cases of alleged torture, some involving deaths in custody, and there has been no investigation, let alone prosecution, for command responsibility, even at the immediate supervisory level, of people killed in custody as a result of torture.”

Speaking of accountability, he said, “You can’t say that justice has been done when calling for Bahrain to be a republic gets you a life sentence and the officer who repeatedly fired on an unarmed man at close range only gets seven years.” Regarding convictions affirmed by Bahrain’s highest court despite credible allegations of torture, Bassiouni called the rulings “legally unsound,” and cited one case in which the court declared the defendant’s confession admissible because it was taken several days after torture occurred. Of that decision, he said,“I cannot think of a more egregious and specious legal opinion…”