Death sentences in Bahrain have risen by over 600 per cent since the start of the Arab Spring and the use of torture is “drastically escalating”, a new report has found, as family members of those on death row speak out about their “living nightmare”.
The six-fold rise in death sentences comes despite the fact that the UK has poured millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money into the tiny Gulf country in a bid to improve its human rights record.
The joint report released by UK charity Reprieve and the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD) found that at least 51 people have been sentenced to death since the 2011 Arab Spring protests, compared with seven death sentences in the decade before.
Read the full story in The Independent.