Sheikh Ali Salman (Secretary-General of al-Wefaq, Bahrain's main opposition party) — Amnesty International (30 May 2016): Bahrain's appeal court upheld his conviction and raised his sentence from 4 to 9 years over 2012/2014 speeches criticizing the government; Amnesty deems him a prisoner of conscience jailed solely for peacefully expressing his views.

In a shocking attack on the right to freedom of expression Bahrain’s authorities today upheld the conviction of opposition leader Sheikh ‘Ali Salman and increased his prison sentence from four to nine years for giving speeches in which he criticized the government, said Amnesty International.

Sheikh ‘Ali Salman, who is the Secretary General of the main opposition party al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, was originally sentenced on 16 June 2015 after an unfair trial to four years in prison on charges including “publicly insulting the Interior Ministry” and “publicly inciting others to disobey the law”. The charges relate to speeches he made in 2012 and 2014.

Amnesty International considers Sheikh ‘Ali Salman, Ebrahim Sharif and Fadhel Abbas Mahdi Mohamed to be prisoners of conscience imprisoned solely for peacefully expressing their views.

[Source is in English (Amnesty International press release); editorial context, not a translation.] BEHAVIORAL civil-liberties / freedom-of-expression evidence concerning Bahrain and its main opposition party, together with the DECLARED stance of Sheikh Ali Salman — Secretary-General of al-Wefaq National Islamic Society, Bahrain's largest opposition party and a leading force in the February 2011 pro-democracy uprising (which demanded a constitutional monarchy, an elected government, expanded parliamentary powers, and an end to discrimination against Bahrain's Shia majority). Per Amnesty (30 May 2016): Bahrain's Court of Appeal upheld Salman's conviction and increased his sentence from four to nine years over speeches he gave in 2012 and 2014 criticizing the government, on charges including "publicly insulting the Interior Ministry" and "publicly inciting others to disobey the law"; Amnesty considers him a prisoner of conscience imprisoned solely for peacefully expressing his views. This is the dataset's first Bahrain entry and documents the suppression of peaceful Gulf-Shia democratic opposition. PROVENANCE FLAG for the auditor: this is a rights-org record of the STATE's conduct and of Salman's peaceful-reform stance as characterized by Amnesty — Salman's OWN verbatim speech text (the 2012/2014 Arabic speeches he was convicted for) could not be fetched (the Columbia Global Freedom of Expression case page is JS-walled) and is still wanted as a direct declared-position source. [Axes: civil-liberties / freedom-of-expression (behavioral — Bahrain state conduct), democracy, regime-stance, sectarianism. Declared method: peaceful / non-violent reform.]