Jawad Fairooz was a member of parliament in Bahrain’s Council of Representatives from 2006 to 2010 and was re-elected as a member of parliament in 2010, for a further four-year term. Mr Fairooz has also been a member of the secretariat general of Alwefaq National Islamic Society, Bahrain, since its inception on 2 November 2001, and a member of its board from 2006 to 2012.
On 17 February 2011, Mr Fairooz and seventeen fellow Alwefaq members of parliament withdrew from the Council of Representatives in protest at the response of Bahraini state authorities to large-scale protests in Bahrain and the deaths of two protesters. The events of this period have been examined in detail by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, and its findings were published in November 2011 (BICI Report). Those protests had begun on 14 February 2011, and after a degree of accommodation by the government, a state of National Safety was declared on 15 March 2011, the protesters were forcefully dispersed, with many arrested and a number of protesters and police killed.
On 11 and 12 April 2011, Mr Fairooz’s house was attacked by Molotov cocktails. On 2 May 2011, Mr Fairooz was arrested from his home by three masked and hooded men who forced their way into his home. Mr Fairooz was detained until 7 August 2011. He was held in solitary confinement for more than 43 days, denied access to a lawyer except on two short occasions, and he was not allowed to contact his family until 27 days after arrest. While detained, he was questioned repeatedly about his political activities, and was subjected to blindfolding, stress positions, beatings, sexual assault and humiliating acts and insults constituting torture and ill-treatment. During this time his wife was also called into the police station for questioning over a period of several hours.
Mr Fairooz was prosecuted on charges relating to his freedoms of expression and opinion, and freedoms of peaceful assembly and association, and sentenced to a suspended prison sentence. Mr Fairooz was bought both before the National Safety Courts, which demonstrated a lack of impartiality and independence. The structure of the National Safety Courts precluded the possibility of a fair trial. At the end of the period of National Safety, Mr Fairooz’s case was referred to the competent civil courts on 29 June 2011. However, due process failures continued.
Further, together with thirty-one other individuals, Mr Fairooz has also been unilaterally stripped of his Bahraini citizenship, in violation of international law. The reason for the revocation was that those concerned had caused “damage to state security.” Mr Fairooz is currently residing in the United Kingdom, while stateless.
REDRESS has written to UN special rapporteurs and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on human rights to bring Mr Fairooz’s case to the attention of the Bahraini authorities.
- Allegation letter to UN Special Rapporteurs and Working Group in the case of Jawad Fairooz (29 July 2013)
- Extract from the BICI Report concerning Mr Fairooz
- UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Press briefing (23 November 2012) concerning Bahrain and other countries (see statement regarding revocation of citizenship).
Source http://www.redress.org/case-docket/allegation-letter-concerning-jawad-fairooz
