A Bahraini criminal court has sentenced a sports journalist to three months in prison for a tweet that allegedly defamed the Sunni sect of Islam.
Faisal Hayyat was arrested on 9 October, but it was unclear about the specific nature of his offence. A few days earlier, he posted an open letter on Facebook to Bahrain’s interior minister in which he referred to the conditions in which he was detained, and tortured, in 2011. He referred to government corruption and urged for an end to restrictions on civil and political freedoms.
Hayyat’s conviction has been condemned by the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders and the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) as a violation of Hayyat’s right to free speech.
Read full article here
Document Type:
Feature:
Issue:
