Nabeel Rajab is a Bahraini activist, opposition leader, and co-founder of the Bahrain Human Rights Society (BHRS) and the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR), two of the first organizations to report on systematic human rights violations in the Kingdom. Known for effectively using social networking in his activism, Rajab has been a leading figure of the Bahraini opposition movement for decades. In retaliation for his work, particularly during the Bahraini Arab Spring uprising in 2011, government agents beat, arrested, and even threatened Rajab with death. In 2012, Nabeel’s organization, BCHR, was awarded the Freedom of Expression Advocacy Award by the Index on Censorship. In April 2015, he was arrested again after writing an article that highlighted the mistreatment and torture of inmates at Jaw Prison in Bahrain. He was scheduled to speak at the 2015 Oslo Freedom Forum but was unable to attend due to his wrongful imprisonment. Though Nabeel’s five-year sentence was upheld in December 2018, he was released in June 2020.
