Bahrain’s constitution also prohibits torture and ill-treatment as well as the use of coerced confessions against criminal defendants at trial. Bahrain’s constitution affirms that “an accused person is innocent until proven guilty.” The UN Human Rights Committee, which monitors state compliance with the ICCPR, has determined that in death penalty cases “scrupulous respect of the guarantees of fair trial is particularly important.”Īrticle 7 of the ICCPR prohibits torture and ill-treatment, and article 14(3)(g) states that a person is “not to be compelled to testify against himself or to confess guilt.” Bahrain is also a state party to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Bahrain acceded to the ICCPR on September 20, 2006. ![]() Presently, some 170 states have abolished the death penalty or introduced a moratorium on its use in law or in practice, reflecting a growing international consensus against its use.Īrticle 14 of the ICCPR details fundamental fair trial rights, starting with the presumption of innocence. While the death penalty is not absolutely prohibited under international human rights law, article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), dealing with the right to life, requires that death sentences “may be imposed only for the most serious crimes.” In the February 2019 letter to the United Nations, the Bahraini government wrote that the death penalty is “applied solely as a penalty for extremely serious offenses, such as premeditated murder as an aggravating circumstance.” The United Nations General Assembly, beginning in 2007 and most recently in 2020, passed resolutions calling on states to impose a moratorium on their use of the death penalty. Under Bahraini law, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa has the power to ratify these sentences, commute them, or grant pardons. As of June 2022, 26 men were on death row, and all have exhausted their appeals. In a February 2019 letter to the United Nations Office in Geneva, the government of Bahrain claimed that its courts “actually hand down very few death sentences.” In fact, since 2011, courts in Bahrain have sentenced 51 people to death, and the state has executed six since the end of a de facto moratorium on executions in 2017.
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