A Bahraini editor, along with six others including two lawyers, appeared in a court Saturday on charges that his newspaper defamed ten judges of the Sharia Court, legal sources said.
The judges accused Anwar Abdul Rahman, the editor in chief of the Arabic daily Akhbar Al Khaleej, and the six others, including two women's rights lawyers, two women activists, a cleric and a journalist of the paper, of publishing an article they deemed offensive, according to Gulf News.
The paper had reported in May a hunger strike by a Bahraini mother outside the justice ministry in a bid to win back the custody of her two daughters. In an interview with the paper, the women accused the judges of being "biased".
The sources told Gulf News the judge has deferred the hearing till September 23 to give defense lawyers more time to study the case.
"The outcome of the case could decide future horizons of press freedom – a freedom many other nations have struggled and fought hard to achieve through generations," Abdul Rahman said. "We have nothing to fear from a just court."
The mother's case is a social humanitarian case, related to women's rights, he wrote in a front-page editorial. "And we hope it will remain untainted by political infiltration." (Albawaba.com)
© 2003 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
