Hawzah News Agency - (Manama - Bahrain) - The Al Khalifa regime in Manama is refusing to release the president of Bahrain’s Center for Human Rights, Nabeel Rajab, who criticized the Saudi-backed kingdom.

Nabeel Rajab has been serving five years in prison for a post on social media websites where he exposed the regime’s use of torture in the notorious Jaw Prison. In February 2018, Bahrain’s court found him guilty of insulting national institutions and spreading false or malicious news, statements or rumors in wartime to cause damage to military preparations for defending the state of Bahrain.

In another verdict, Rajab was convicted of insulting a neighboring country for his critical post about Saudi Arabia’s war and airstrikes in Yemen. Bahrain’s court of cessation in December 2018 upheld the rulings.

A recent introduced legislation allows alternative non-custodial sentencing including fines and house arrest but Bahrain’s High Appeal Court rejected the alternative sentence requested by Nabeel’s lawyers.

Nabeel Rajab is a well-known human rights lawyer and one of the leaders of Bahrain’s 2011 uprising against the Al Khalifa regime. He served two years in prison from 2015 to 2017 for speaking to journalists.

According to director of Bahrain’s Institute for Rights and Democracy, Seyed Ahmed Al-Wadaei, the decision to keep the activist in prison was the latest shameful attempt from Manama to stifle the dissent.