A prominent Bahraini activist, who played a key role in the 2011 Shiite-led anti-government protests, on Monday lost his final appeal against a five-year jail term for writing tweets deemed offensive to the state.
The Gulf state’s supreme court, whose verdicts are final, upheld the jail term against Nabeel Rajab, his second imprisonment verdict this year, for criticising the Sunni-ruled monarchy on social media, a judicial source said.
Rights groups were swift to condemn the latest verdict — which is final and cannot be challenged.
Amnesty International declared Rajab a “prisoner of conscience” and said the sentence was a “travesty of justice” and “utterly outrageous”.
The London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy said the verdict “illustrates that Bahrain’s corrupt political system sought to continue his (Rajab) political persecution”.
Rajab, a high-profile rights activist who is already serving a two-year term in another case,…
