Americans for Democracy and Human Rights in Bahrain strongly denounces the new charges brought against prominent human rights defender and dual Bahraini-Danish citizen AbdulHadi AlKhawaja. AlKhawaja, who is serving a life sentence at Jau Prison for his participation in the 2011 pro-democracy demonstrations, is facing new charges related to his activism in prison.
In November 2022, AlKhawaja informed his family that authorities are bringing four new charges against him for his protests against the harsh conditions which he and other political prisoners have been subjected to in Jau prison.
On 16 November, the Second Lower Criminal Court scheduled a hearing on the first of these new charges for an incident in November 2021 when authorities denied his right to call his daughters. However, the court postponed this hearing until 28 November on the grounds that Al-Khawaja needed to perform a power of attorney, something which he was going to do in-person during the hearing. A lieutenant attempted to pressure and threatened Al-Khawaja into recording a video stating that he was refusing to attend the hearing. Nevertheless, Al-Khawaja refused and repeatedly stated on camera his desire to attend the hearing. He was then transferred back to his cell.
