Bahrain has released over a thousand prisoners, but political activists remain locked up.
Several thousand political opponents are languishing in prisons across Bahrain. Such sentences reflect the increasingly restrictive and dangerous environment faced by human rights activists.
UN's human rights office says upholding of Nabeel Rajab's five-year jail sentence by the top court this week showed "continued suppression of government critics".
Nabeel Rajab, a key figure of 2011 pro-democracy protests in Bahrain, was convicted over tweets alleging the torture of prisoners in his country and criticism of Saudi Arabia's air strikes in Yemen
The international rights group accuses the West, particularly Britain and the United States, of turning a blind eye to the abuses in the island kingdom.
Rajab was granted bail in a pending trial relating to the spread of false information, with the case to resume on January 23. He is being kept in jail to be questioned in another cybercrime case on a similar charge.
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