A SPELL in prison has become the rule rather than the exception for the Khawajas. On August 29th Maryam al-Khawaja, a prominent activist, became the third member of the family to be detained by Bahrain’s government in the past twelve months for campaigning for rights.
Ms Khawaja (pictured), a dual Bahraini-Danish citizen and co-director of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR), which has offices in Beirut and Copenhagen, was picked up at Manama airport as she arrived to try to visit her father, veteran prisoner-of-conscience Abdulhadi al-Khawaja. He has been in prison since 2011 and is ill from his ongoing hunger strike.
Ms Khawaja’s lawyer, who has been denied contact with the 27-year-old, says she has been stripped of her nationality and transferred to a women’s prison pending further questioning. Charges may relate to Ms Khawaja’s campaign for Bahrain’s torturers to be brought to justice, assaulting a police officer during her arrest and “insulting the king”—an offence that carries a sentence of up to seven years in jail. The Bahraini authorities were not immediately available to comment on Ms Khawaja's arrest and their representatives in Britain have not responded to her detention.
Nabeel Rajab, Bahrain's most prominent rights campaigner who was released in May after a two-year sentence for participating in “illegal gatherings” during mass demonstrations of 2011, says he is worried that "Bahrain’s whole human rights movement will be put behind bars". Maryam’s young sister, Zainab, was herself released on bail in February after almost a year’s detention on similar charges. Now seven months pregnant, she will face trial again in October and, if sentenced, could end up giving birth in prison.
