Trying to save two pro-democracy activists from execution will prove the UK is serious about human rights

An unusual amount of pressure has built up around the Foreign Office over the cases of Mohammed Ramadhan and Husain Mousa in Bahrain

Dominic Raab has faced questions over the case in parliament (Reuters TV)

It is not often that the imminent execution of two pro-democracy activists in the Middle East becomes the subject of a heated row in the UK and debates in both houses of parliament. But a growing number of rights groups, international lawyers, British MPs and peers point out that the UK is involved and so urgently needs to intervene.

The two condemned men – Mohammed Ramadhan, a 37-year-old father of three, and airport policeman and Husain Mousa, 34, a hotel driver – say they were tortured to confess to murder. Those allegations of torture were investigated and then effectively thrown out by two Bahraini security bodies that were funded and supported by the UK government, allowing the case against them to proceed.

British authorities need to act quickly. Time is running out. On Monday rights groups believe Bahrain’s Court of Cassation will reject the two men’s final appeal and uphold the death sentences. All legal options will have been exhausted, they will be at risk of imminent execution without notice. In previous cases, the condemned have faced the firing squad.

Ramadhan and Mousa participated in the pro-democracy protest of 2011 and in 2014 were arrested on charges of killing a police officer in a bomb attack that same year.

In detention they said they were stripped, lashed with plastic pipes, threatened with rape and forced to listen to the screams of other inmates being tortured for days. Mousa said his genitals were kicked and beaten until he “confessed” to the killing.

Although Mousa recanted his confession at trial, saying it was coerced, the court relied on it to sentence both him and his co-defendant Ramadhan to death. Facing mounting international pressure, the allegations of torture were investigated by Bahrain’s Special Investigations Unit (SIU) and Ombudsman, who have received millions of pounds worth of training from the UK paid for by British taxpayers. The probe by the British-funded bodies was denounced by independent experts at the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims as “seriously flawed” as it overlooked clear medical evidence of abuse.

The death sentences against the two men were reimposed this January.

With time running out, 46 MPs and peers, from across most of the UK’s major parties, have now signed an open letter calling on the government to urgently intervene.

It was shared with The Independent just days after the matter was raised in the House of Commons and the House of Lords. “The UK government has consistently failed to criticise due process violations in their trial or acknowledge abuses Mohammed and Husain have suffered. Just last week, the Foreign Office said it “welcomed” the work of SIU and Ombudsman,” the letter reads.

“The persistence of torture and the significant rise in the use of the death penalty since 2017 in Bahrain show that this soft-touch approach has not worked, and a further 10 inmates are at imminent risk of execution.”

Bahrain’s use of the death penalty and torture has soared at “an alarming” rate over the last few years, according to rights group Reprieve. Bahrain denies all allegations of torture made against it.

But despite this, since 2012, Reprieve says, the UK government has delivered more £6.5m worth of technical assistance to Bahrain’s justice and security sectors. The London-based rights group adds these bodies are not capable of carrying out torture investigations, allowing Bahrain’s courts to continue sentencing citizens to death on the basis of coerced confessions.

Repreive said in the 60 years prior to 2017, Bahrain carried out only 10 executions, with no executions between 2010 and 2017. In the three years since Bahrain lifted a de-facto moratorium on executions, it has carried out six, some of which have been described the UN Special Rapporteur on Executions as “extrajudicial killings”.

Five of the six victims were executed on the basis of torture-tainted confessions, according to Reprieve – an allegation Bahrain denies.

Right now, according to the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (BIRD), 26 people are on death row in Bahrain. Those most at risk of imminent execution are Ramadhan and Mousa who will very likely have their death sentences confirmed tomorrow.

And so, an unusual amount of pressure piled on the UK government to do something.

This weekend Pete Wetherby QC, executive member of the Bar Human Rights Council, argued in an amicus curiae brief that upholding “the convictions in these cases would be wholly inconsistent with Bahrain’s international obligations”.

On Thursday, Sir Peter Bottomley MP, the father of the house, raised the issue in parliament, asking foreign secretary Dominic Raab whether he would “use the UK’s constructive dialogue” with Bahrain to publicly raise the cases of these men and exert pressure.

Foreign Office ministers were also questioned over why the UK was turning a blind eye to Bahrain’s abuses, in apparent contradiction to the foreign secretary’s decision to unveil Britain’s new human rights sanctions regime.

“It’s one thing for the foreign secretary to speak of taking action against those complicit in torture, the death penalty, those who are blood-drenched, but it’s another for the government to walk the walk,” Stephen Doughty, the shadow minister for Africa, said.

“Time is of the essence in this case,” he added.

Middle East minister James Cleverly resisted calls to pull the plug on the agreements, suggesting it would do more harm than good before adding that the Bahraini royal family “have demonstrated a desire to improve their structures and transparency”.

It followed similar statements in May by FCO’s minister for South Asia and the Commonwealth, Tariq Mahmood Ahmad, who defended the work of the UK’s Bahrain programme saying it “continued to comply with our human rights obligations”.

Reprieve director Maya Foa vehemently rejects this and points to the apparent hypocrisy of the UK government talking of “cracking down on regimes with ‘blood on their hands’” but not acting to save the life of Ramadhan and Mousa who were beaten “until they were unrecognisable”.

BIRD’s Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, meanwhile pointed to the government’s “contradictory Gulf policy”, as it not only comes in the same week that the government promised to sanction human rights abusers but the same week it resumed arms sales to the Saudi-led coalition that has been accused of committing war crimes in Yemen.

The UK has the capacity to try to save the lives of these two men and should act now. If it does not do so, it would be yet another failure of the UK to stand up for basic rights.