Ali Al-Hajee, a Bahraini political prisoner, released a statement in early June 2019 to denounce the extremely poor detention conditions in Jau prison. He has threatened to resume his hunger strike if there is no improvement.
Ali Al-Hajee is a Bahraini political prisoner. He was condemned to ten years in prison in 2013. Since the beginning of his detention, he has been enduring ill-treatment and been prevented from accessing medical care.In addition, he was not authorised to have family visits for two years. This led him to start a 75 days hunger strike in November 2018. However, it did not result in anything concrete.
In his statement, Al-Hajee highlights the “the stark level of impunity enjoyed by state officials for human rights abuses in Bahrain” and denounces the lack of efficiency of British training programmes to Bahraini prison officers.
Following the release of Al-Hajee’s letter, the Bahraini Embassy in London denied his testimonial and told the Morning Star that his torture claims are “unfounded.” Similarly, on 5 June, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has omitted to address the ongoing human rights violations in their 2018 report on human rights and democracy, even though the violations that occurred in 2018 being widely recognised by the international community, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
The European Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (ECDHR) strongly condemns the lack of acknowledgment of the ongoing basic rights violations from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Bahraini Embassy and London. ECDHR calls on the Bahraini authorities to take responsibility and hold accountable the perpetrators, and to release all political prisoners.