Abdulhadi al-Khawaja

Abdulhadi Abdulla Hubail al-Khawaja (عبد الهادي عبد الله حبيل الخواجة; born 5 April 1961) is a Bahraini political activist.

After finishing high school in Bahrain in 1977, al-Khawaja traveled to the UK to continue his further education.

In 1979, he took part in student activities in London in reaction to demonstrations and arrests in Bahrain.

Many students abroad, including al-Khawaja, were denied renewal of their passports and asked to return home.

In the summer of 1980, after fellow students had been detained and interrogated under torture for their activities in London and his family's house had been ransacked and searched, al-Khawaja, fearing detention if he went back to Bahrain, decided to remain abroad.

In 1981, the Bahraini government staged a crackdown on opponents, claiming to have uncovered a coup attempt by the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain.

Hundreds of civilians, mostly students, including minors, were detained and tortured.

Seventy-three detainees were tried by the State Security Court (now abolished) on charges of membership of an illegal organization and attempting to use violence and given sentences of 7–25 years imprisonment.

In 1991, al-Khawaja was granted political asylum in Denmark.

Following his resignation from the CDPPB in 1992, he and other Bahrainis living in exile in the Scandinavian countries and the UK founded the Bahrain Human Rights Organization (BHRO), based in Denmark.

During the period 1992–2001 BHRO gained respect for persistent, professional, and non-partisan activities at international level which contributed to the political changes that took place in Bahrain when the new ruler came to power in 1999.

After 12 years in exile, Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja returned to Bahrain in 1999 following wide-ranging political reforms by the Bahraini government that allowed independent human rights groups to operate in Bahrain.

Al-Khawaja became head of the BHRO, prior to returning to Bahrain in 2001 following a general amnesty.

Al-Khawaja became one of the main founders and director of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR), which was officially registered in June 2002.

Al-Khawaja was also one of the founders of the Bahrain Unemployment Committee, described as sharing a "similar confrontational strategy" with the center.

Many of the committee's members are involved in the centre or the Haq Movement, including Abdulwahab Hussain.

Since his return, al-Khawaja has been subjected to detention, unfair trial, and physical assaults as a result of his human rights activities.

Well-documented physical assaults against him in March 2002 and June/July/September 2005 were not investigated despite pledges by UN bodies and international NGOs.

On 25 September 2004, the BCHR was closed down, and al-Khawaja was arrested, a day after publicly criticizing the prime minister and the Bahraini regime for corruption and human rights abuses, using language which "the authorities easily construed as incitement of hatred".

Throughout the two months that he spent in prison while on trial, his supporters held widespread protests, both inside Bahrain and abroad.

On the morning of 21 November, the court sentenced al-Khawaja to one year in prison, but later in the day it was announced that he had been given a Royal Pardon by the King and was released.

The BCHR is still banned by the government, but has remained very active.

His human rights campaigning activities have been acknowledged by the International Conference of Human Rights Defenders in Dublin, and he was named by the Arab Program for Human Rights Defenders as its Regional Activist of 2005.

On 15 July 2005, police sought to prevent a peaceful demonstration by the Committee for the Unemployed against the government's management of the unemployment situation and the state budget for 2005–2006.

The authorities had reportedly been informed about the demonstration a week earlier.

While protesters were still assembling, the security forces charged and violently dispersed the demonstration.

A total of 32 people said to have required hospital treatment, including Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, Nabeel Rajab and labor rights activist Abbas al-'Umran.

On 22 June 2011, al-Khawaja and eight others were sentenced to life imprisonment following the suppression of pro-democracy protests against the Bahraini government.

Al-Khawaja has previously gone on a series of hunger strikes while serving his life sentence, in protest of the political conditions in Bahrain.

He is former president and co-founder of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR), a nonprofit non-governmental organization which works to promote human rights in Bahrain.

He has held a number of positions and played various roles in regional and international human rights organizations.

On 9 April 2011, al-Khawaja was arrested and tried as part of a campaign of repression by the Bahraini authorities following pro-democracy protests in the Bahraini uprising.

Front Line Defenders expressed fear for his life following allegations of torture and sexual assault in detention.

Al-Khawaja was sentenced on 22 June 2011, along with eight other activists, to life imprisonment.

Until February 2011, al-Khawaja was the Middle East and North Africa Protection Coordinator with Front Line Defenders – the International Foundation for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders.

He is also a member of the International Advisory Network in the Business and Human Rights Resource Center chaired by Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Al-Khawaja is a member of the advisory board of the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies and also an expert adviser for and member of the coordinating committee of the Arab Group for Monitoring Media Performance monitoring the media in Bahrain and six other Arab countries.

Al-Khawaja was part of Amnesty International's fact-finding mission in Iraq, and has been a researcher and project consultant for Amnesty and other international organizations.

On 8 February 2012, he started an open-ended hunger strike until "freedom or death", protesting continuing detentions in Bahrain.

The strike lasted for 110 days, and resulted in al-Khawaja being force-fed by authorities.