Abdulhadi Al Khawaja
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Abdulhadi Al Khawaja is the president of Bahrain Centre for Human Rights.
He was arrested in September 2004 after he gave a public lecture in which he criticized the country's Prime Minister, using language "the authorities easily construed as incitement of hatred"[1], but pardoned by King Hamad immediately after his trial. On February 2, 2007, he was arrested again by Bahraini authorities along with the secretary general of the Haq Movement political society, Hassan Mushaima and again pardoned by the King. [1]
Although Al Khawaja's organisation refers to "human rights" in its title, according to a study by Katja Neithammar of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs it constitutes the "most radical opposition group currently found in Bahrain", with the activists involved having “chosen to operate as an NGO - although with political goals"[2]. According to the study, Al Khawaja's Centre is an avowedly sectarian organisation, although "their rhetoric to international NGOs is completely consistent with Western democracy promotion parlance"[3]. Original left-wing co-founders of the Centre, like Aziz Abul, allege that they have been forced out of the organisation by Al Khawaja and "his circle"[4].
Before he returned to Bahrain, Mr Al Khawaja was the head of the "Bahrain Human Rights Organisation"[5], a subsidiary of the Iran-based Islamic Front for the Liberation of Bahrain, which carried out a series of bomb attacks against civilians in the 1990s. On 1 November 1996, the group claimed responsibility for the bombing of the Diplomat Hotel, with the group telling the Associated Press "We put a bomb in the Diplomat hotel 20 minutes ago...after the feast...tell the government that we will destroy everyplace."[6] In 1981, the Front attempted a coup d'etat in order to install a theocratic government under an Iranian-based Iraqi cleric, Hojjat ol-Eslam Hadi al-Modarresi. In a 1982 Time magazine article by Strobe Talbott, it is alleged that Al Modarresi was the head of the Gulf Affairs Section of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards[7].
Al Khawaja was one of the speakers at the November 2005 launch of Haq Movement, a splinter group from the main Shia Islamist party, Al Wefaq. Haq split from Al Wefaq after sixty members led by Hassan Mushaima walked out in opposition to its announcement that it would participate in elections.
Another organisation Al Khawaja founded is the Bahrain Unemployment Committee, which has been described as sharing a "similar confrontational strategy" with the Centre[8]. Many of those who sit on the Committee are involved in the Centre or the Haq Movement, including Abdul Wahhab Hussain[9], who in June 2006 called on his supporters to take up weapons if they are unable to achieve their objectives through peaceful means. Hussain's call received strong condemnation from Bahraini NGOs, with 24 of them signing a petition condemning his threat of violence and urging him to promote his agenda through peaceful dialogue[10].
