Amnesty International said the Appeals court’s decision against opposition leader Sheikh Ali Salman demonstrates the Bahraini authorities' relentless and unlawful efforts to silence any form of dissent.

The Bahrain Forum for Human Rights (BFHR) called on member states of the Human Rights Council to freeze Bahrain's membership in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which the government had joined under Law No. 56 of 2006 issued on August 12, 2006.

Bahrain sentenced the head of the country's Shiite opposition movement to life in prison Sunday for spying for rival Gulf state Qatar in a ruling rights groups have called a travesty.

A Bahraini court on Sunday ordered life sentences for three senior opposition members, overturning a previous acquittal on charges of spying for Qatar in what an international rights group called a “travesty of justice”.

Bahrain's Court of Appeals sentenced on Sunday (November 4, 2018) opposition leader Sheikh Ali Salman and senior opposition officials Sheikh Hassan Sultan and Ali Al-Aswad to life in prison for "communicating with Qatar."