“The Bahraini authorities must stop detaining anyone who opposes them and release protesters who have been locked up for peacefully demanding reform”

Bahraini authorities are under criticism and condemnation for its illegal acts and arrest of peaceful protesters, medics and MPs. Former Bahraini lawmaker and member of the country's main opposition group has died in a hospital after being held in custody of the Manama regime.

Jawad Fairouz who was a member of al-Wefaq political society, was recently arrested and detained by Bahraini police, local sources said on Thursday.

The development comes after rights group Amnesty International appealed to rulers in Manama on Wednesday to end the arrest of opposition members.

“The Bahraini authorities must stop detaining anyone who opposes them and release protesters who have been locked up for peacefully demanding reform,” AFP quoted Amnesty's deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, Philip Luther, as saying Wednesday.

The Bahraini rulers should bring to an end their campaign of terror through arrests and extension of the emergency rule to curb the ongoing protests, he said.

UN human rights chief Navi Pillay on Thursday also condemned death sentences imposed by military courts in Bahrain on protestors well as military trials for civilian activists. "The application of the death penalty without due process and after a trial held in secrecy is illegal and absolutely unacceptable," the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said.
  
"The defendants are entitled to fair trials before civil courts, in accordance with international legal standards and in keeping with Bahrain's international human rights obligations," she added in a statement.

The UN human rights office said the four protestors who were sentenced to death and the three who took life imprisonment were held without access to their families and limited access to lawyers, it added.