In a letter shared exclusively with the Guardian through the London-based Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD), Mohammed Ramadan, who has been in prison for nine years, asked the pontiff to “ask the king of bahrain to release me and reunite. me with my family and children”. Francis begins his three-day visit to Bahrain, where the largest Catholic church in the Gulf region opened last December. Bahrain has been criticized for serious human rights abuses, especially its crackdown on the kingdom’s Shiite Muslim majority in the wake of the 2011 pro-democracy uprising. Ramadhan, 39, and a second man, Husain Moosa, 36, both Shiite Muslims, were convicted of a bombing that killed a policeman in 2014 and sentenced to death despite a Bahraini inquest that found matching medical evidence with the allegations of torture. Ramadan, who is Bahraini, has previously attended peaceful pro-democracy protests, including one that took place on the third anniversary of the Bahraini uprising. The prisoner, who criticized British Foreign Secretary James Cleverley for not following through on a promise to raise his case during a visit to Bahrain last year, also claims Jau prison authorities are denying him medical attention for a painful lump on his neck. . The UK has close security and political ties with Bahrain, and says it has worked with Bahrain to help the country reform its penal system. Speaking after a visit in February this year, Tariq Ahmad, UK Secretary of State for South Asia and the Commonwealth, said it was “fantastic to build on the historic UK-Bahrain relationship by discussing the landscape and humanitarian challenges rights and considering how the UK can best support Bahrain in its work and initiatives going forward.” At least 26 prisoners are on death row in Bahrain, of which 12 have been sentenced in political cases, according to BIRD. All 26 face imminent execution as they have exhausted all domestic remedies, with the latest step being the ratification of their death sentences by King Hamad bin Isa Khalifa. A recent report by Human Rights Watch and BIRD investigated eight cases of death row inmates and found that their trials were in serious violation of international law, with sentences based solely on confessions allegedly coerced through torture, including alleged electric shocks to the genitals, beatings, sleep deprivation and attempted rape. Hassan Musaima, the 74-year-old former opposition leader of Bahrain, is serving a life sentence for his role in leading the pro-democracy movement in 2011. In a letter to the pope, also seen by the Guardian, he wrote: “His claims ruling on pluralism, diversity of opinions, tolerance and love are disproved by facts and events that have happened over the years. It will also be disproved by a thorough visit to Bahraini prisons, which are full of innocent people who are paying the price for their demands for minimal rights.” Families of death row inmates also asked the pope to press for their release. “Our family members remain behind bars and at risk of execution despite the clear injustice of their convictions,” they wrote in a letter. “Many of them were targeted because they participated in pro-democracy protests during the Arab Spring.” Francis will attend the Bahrain Forum for Dialogue: East and West for Human Coexistence and celebrate a public mass at Bahrain’s national stadium on Saturday. In a tweet on Wednesday, the pontiff said: “Tomorrow I leave for an apostolic trip to the Kingdom of Bahrain, a trip under the banner of dialogue. I will participate in a forum focused on the inevitable need for East and West to come closer for the good of human coexistence.”
