Ibrahim Sharif is a Bahraini human rights defender and political activist who serves as General Secretary of the secular socialist National Democratic Action Society since 2005 and was formerly associated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Bahrain. He was arrested at his home in Manama on 17 March 2011 for his role in the Bahraini uprising and subsequently detained in Qarin prison where he and other political leaders organised a hunger strike in October 2011 protesting the ill-treatment of minors and other detainees and rejecting trials before a military judge. He declared the end of the strike around 22 October 2011 from prison communications. On 22 June 2011 he was sentenced in a military court to five years in prison alongside other opposition figures, in politically motivated trials widely condemned by international rights groups and upheld on appeal in September 2012. While incarcerated he endured torture and 56 days in solitary confinement without access to family or legal counsel, and was designated a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International before being released under a royal pardon on 19 June 2015 after serving four years and three months. In July 2015, during a commemoration of the killing of a teenage protester in 2012, he delivered a speech denouncing state violence, after which he was re-arrested, tried and sentenced in February 2016 to a one-year prison term for “inciting hatred”, a conviction Amnesty and other organisations condemned as punitive for exercising freedom of expression. Following his release he continued speaking out via social media and public commentary, leading to repeated short-term detentions in December 2023 and March 2024 for criticising government policy on issues.

He was arbitrarily arrested on 12 November 2025, and on 08 January 2026, the Bahraini judiciary sentenced him to six months in prison with immediate effect, in addition to a fine of 200 Bahraini dinars, on charges including “insulting Arab states and spreading false news,” due to statements he made peacefully expressing his opinions. He was released on 17 February 2026. This was his tenth arrest.