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King of Bahrain Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa. JONATHAN ERNST / POOL / AFP

King Hamad of Bahrain on Sunday ordered the reinstatement of the citizenship of 551 Bahrainis stripped of their citizenship by court decisions.

" King Hamad has asked the Minister of the Interior to study citizenship revocation decisions and to prepare a list of reintegration beneficiaries ," the statement said.

Bahrain, a Gulf country governed by a Sunni dynasty, a close ally of the United States and Saudi Arabia, has been accused of resorting massively to the disqualification of nationality in its repression against opponents, mainly Shiites.

Human rights defenders estimate that some 990 people have been stripped of their nationality for involvement in unrest in Bahrain since 2012.

This is positive, but we must not lose sight of the fact that the law itself is not changed and that it allows to continue to revoke nationalities. This decision is only a small aspect of the global operations of annihilation, scrubbing, of any opposition in Bahrain that have been engaged since 2011, since the spring of Manama, and which led to the dissolution of all the legalized political parties. , which led to the confiscation of all the property of these political parties, the arrest of some leaders of these parties, the main defenders of human rights remain in prison, the only independent newspaper was closed the day to next day on a single SMS. The whole sense of the policy of repression does not seem, and far from it, put into question.

For Marc Pellas, this decision does not change the repression

Specialist in security issues in the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula regions.

22/04/2019 - by Oriane Verdier Listen

An announcement that comes after a very critical mass trial

This announcement comes after critics of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

Last Tuesday, a court in Bahrain sentenced 138 people to three years in prison for life for "terrorism" and deprived them of their nationality after a mass trial. A lawsuit denounced by Amnesty International. The convicts - Bahraini citizens of Shiite confession according to a judicial source quoted by AFP - were among a group of 169 people prosecuted for "forming a terrorist group" and links with the Revolutionary Guards in Iran.

" Tuesday's convictions raise serious concerns about law enforcement, especially during this mass trial, which apparently did not benefit from the procedural guarantees necessary to hold a fair trial, " he said. said High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet.

The authorities deny any discrimination against the Shia majority and claim to be confronted with violent groups linked to neighboring Iran, which denies Manama's accusations.

With AFP