Recent news of a serious COVID-19 outbreak inside Bahrain’s notorious Jau Prison is causing international concern. The country’s largest, long-stay men’s prison, and massively overcrowded, Jau is where most of the leaders of the political opposition and civil rights movements are incarcerated.
Sources report that infection rates have risen dramatically, with recent estimates saying that 100 prisoners have tested positive for the virus.
This development has hit the families of detainees especially hard. Their appeals to the international community to exert pressure on the regime to free prisoners of conscience were heeded by some human rights bodies who urged the Bahraini state to release all prisoners of conscience.
