Abduljalil al-Singace
| Abduljalil al-Singace عبدالجليل السنكيس |
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|---|---|
Al-Singace taking part in a protest in 2011 on his wheelchair
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| Born |
January 15, 1962 Bahrain |
| Nationality | Bahraini |
| Occupation | Human rights activist |
| Criminal charge | plotting to topple the government |
| Criminal penalty | Life imprisonment |
| Criminal status | To be retried |
Abduljalil Abdulla al-Singace (Arabic: عبدالجليل عبدالله السنكيس) (52-year-old) is a Bahraini engineer, blogger, and human rights activist. He was arrested in 2009 and 2010 for his human rights activities and released later. In 2011, he was arrested, allegedly tortured and sexually abused, and sentenced to life imprisonment for pro-democracy activism during the Bahraini uprising.
Abduljalil Alsingace is an engineer by training and was an associate professor of engineering at the University of Bahrain. Until 2005, he was the chief of mechanical engineering department when he was demoted by the head of university. Alsingace family say the Prime Minister was behind this decision, due to Alsingace's human rights activity.
Alsingace was disabled at a young age and usually uses a wheelchair or crutches.
Alsingace was Al Wefaq's member of the board of directors. He resigned in 2005 and joined the newly formed Haq Movement for Liberty and Democracy becoming the head of its Human Rights Bureau and its official spokesman. Alsingace began to operate a blog titled "Al-Faseelah", critical of a perceived lack of freedom in Bahrain. During a visit of George W. Bush to Bahrain in 2008, Alsingance attempted to present him with a petition of 80,000 signatures protesting his description of Bahrain as a democracy and demanding the "right to draft a democratic constitution". In January 2009, he was arrested on charges that he had participated in a "terror plot" and that his blog articles had "incited hatred against the regime". His blog was also blocked by authorities in February of that year, leading the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights to begin a letter-writing campaign calling for authorities "to respect freedom of expression, particularly for human rights defenders". Alsingace was soon released following "international and local pressure", and was eventually given a royal pardon.
In June 2009, Alsingace wrote an op-ed for The New York Times calling on Barack Obama not to talk to the Muslim world about democracy unless he truly meant to pursue it.
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