Bahrain 'orders retrial of hunger striker'

Bahrain's highest appeals court on Monday ordered the retrial of Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, a jailed opposition activist who has been on hunger strike since February 8, and other dissidents, their lawyer said. "The court accepted the appeal (against the verdict of a special tribunal) and ordered a trial in the court of appeal," a civil court, Mohamed al-Jishy told AFP after a brief hearing. "We were hoping the verdict would be annulled but the decision will give us an opportunity to defend our clients," Jishy said, adding that no date was yet set for the new trial. Khawaja was jailed with 14 other mostly Shiite activists after being convicted in June last year of plotting to overthrow the Gulf kingdom's Sunni rulers. Seven of them, including Khawaja, were jailed for life while 14 others were sentenced to between two and 15 years in prison. Of the 21 defendants, seven were convicted in absentia and remain at large. "I think he will not stop this strike as this verdict brought no big change" to his situation, said another lawyer Mohammed al-Tajer. A statement carried by state news agency BNA confirmed that the defendants will be tried again in a civil court and said the new trial could see their sentences reduced. The defendants will remain in prison until the next court ruling. Khawaja, who has become a symbol of the opposition movement, was arrested last April shortly after the regime crackdown on a month-long Shiite-led uprising that killed 35 people, according to an independent probe. Bahrain has repeatedly come under pressure from rights groups as well as Western governments to release the 52-year-old father of four, who has dual Danish and Bahraini nationality. But the kingdom has rejected those calls as interference in its internal affairs. Denmark has requested to take him in, but Bahrain has refused to let him go, with the authorities repeatedly saying the activist is in good health. On Sunday, Bahrain's military hospital rejected claims by members of his family that he had been "force-fed." "In response to claims made by Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja's family members today, we want to be clear that the patient has not been force-fed or treated against his will," a spokesperson for the Bahrain Defence Forces Hospital said. His wife Khadija Moussawi told AFP on Saturday that she had not heard from her husband since April 23, two days after he decided to stop drinking water. "I don't know if he's alive, don't know if he's awake, don't know if he's in Bahrain... I don't know anything about him," she said. King Hamad announced a state of "national safety" ahead of last year's mid-March crackdown, in which many activists arrested were tried in special courts. It was later lifted and scores of opposition activists and protesters, handed stiff punishments including several death sentences, were tried again by civil courts. Amnesty International says at least 60 people have been killed in connection with the protests that first began in February last year.