A Danish-Bahraini human rights activist, Maryam Al-Khawaja, said on Friday, September 15, that she was denied boarding a flight to Bahrain by British Airways as she tried to return to the Gulf country to pressure the government to save her detained father, Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja.
In a video message posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, Maryam said she was denied boarding at London’s Heathrow Airport “despite being a Bahraini citizen”.
“I was told I have to speak to Bahraini immigration if I want to get a boarding pass to Bahrain. So effectively we are being denied boarding by British Airways on behalf of the Bahraini government,” she said.
Maryam Al-Khawaja was accompanied by other activists including the Amnesty International secretary general Agnes Callamard and Front Line Defenders’ Olive Moore.
“So our human rights delegation members are all denied a boarding pass. We are told that BA has been instructed by the Bahrain immigration authorities not to give us boarding passes.” #FreeAlKhawaja,” Agnes wrote on X.
Her trip to Manama was meant to raise awareness of her father’s arrest, along with 800 political prisoners who recently went on hunger strike for more than a month.
The prisoners suspended their hunger strike although Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja resumed his strike, after authorities did not allow him to get to a scheduled medical appointment.
62-year-old Abdulhadi Abdulla Hubail Al-Khawaja, an internationally recognized and award-winning human rights defender, a dual citizen of Denmark and Bahrain, was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment on June 22, 2011.
Maryam also faces the risk of arrest upon her arrival in Bahrain.
As per a report by Reuters, the Bahraini government said Maryam was convicted after she assaulted two policewomen in 2014 and she “never served or appealed her one year sentence”.
