Bahrain - April 2024

On 8 April, Bahrain released 1,584 prisoners, including a number of political prisoners, in what was the largest royal pardon since the 2011 Arab spring, when Bahrain experienced a series of mass anti-government protests. According to a government spokesperson, 65 per cent of the released prisoners were convicted of rioting and, of these, some were reported to have been serving life sentences connected with the 2011 protests. Thousands of protesters, journalists and activists are thought to have been imprisoned in Bahrain in the wake of the Arab Spring and it is estimated that many political prisoners remain in detention (more than 600 are thought to be incarcerated in Jau prison, the country’s largest male detention facility). The prisoner release coincided with celebrations of Eid and the King’s silver jubilee, but commentators have speculated that it may have been motivated by a desire to assuage the human rights concerns of its US and UK allies and to reduce domestic tensions over the country’s normalized relationship with Israel.   

Sources: Reuters, The New Arab, The Guardian, Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy