Bahrain releases Canadian pending protest trial

A judge in Bahrain has released on bail a Canadian of Kuwaiti origin who was jailed five years for his role in Shiite-led protests last year in the Gulf kingdom, his lawyer said Tuesday. The court of appeals "released on Monday Naser al-Raas, who suffers from cardiac problems, for health reasons," one week after he turned himself in and appeared in court, Mohsen al-Alawi told AFP. The lawyer added that the decision could also be "because he will most probably be proved innocent at the next hearing" set for February 16. On January 26, Canada urged Bahrain to resolve Raas' case, two days after he lost his right to appeal the verdict for failing to turn up in court on January 24, when 12 other Shiites were acquitted. Raas was held for a month after the mid-March crackdown on protests, and then sentenced in October to five years in prison with the other 12 for involvement in protests against Bahrain's Sunni ruling Al-Khalifa dynasty. He went into hiding after the verdict, according to Amnesty International. Alawi said his client will not be able to leave Bahrain because authorities confiscated his passport. Amnesty International had said that Raas "has a heart condition that his Canadian doctor has said is aggravated by imprisonment, bringing a real threat that he could die behind bars." It also called his imprisonment a "horror story." Last week Canada's deputy foreign minister Diane Ablonczy said her government was pushing for the case "to be resolved expeditiously, particularly in view of Mr. Al-Raas' grave health concerns." Raas, a 29-year-old Kuwaiti-born engineer from Ottawa, travelled to Bahrain in early March 2011 to visit members of his family, Amnesty said. He was arrested at the airport as he prepared to leave the country and was imprisoned for a month in Al-Qala prison, where he claims to have been beaten.