It is with great sadness that the Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) received news of the death of prominent human rights defender Naser Al-Raas, a Canadian citizen of Kuwaiti origin who was arrested during Bahrain’s popular movement in 2011. He passed away on the morning of 20 September 2016 in Toronto, Canada after slipping into a coma on 14 September while awaiting a double heart and lung transplant. Al-Raas was the Executive Director of Salam for Human Rights.

GCHR Co-Director Maryam Al-Khawaja paid tribute to Al-Raas, describing meeting him in Bahrain in 2011. She said, “I remember it like yesterday. Naser Al Raas and I walking around the pearl square, him talking about how much he looks up to my father [Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja.] I remember how my first reaction was why would a Kuwaiti-Canadian take part in our uprising, but when I got to know him it only made sense. Naser not only protested with us, he paid the price for it too.”

Al-Raas was jailed during a visit to see his sisters in Bahrain in March 2011. He was allegedly badly tortured during his detention, including with electrocution, despite his chronic heart condition, which worsened during his time in jail. He was sentenced in October 2011 to five years in prison on charges related to participating in peaceful protests, in an unfair trial during which 12 other defendants were released. He was jailed again on 1 February 2012, then released on bail on 6 February prior to a hearing on 16 February before the High Criminal Court of Appeal, which then overturned the charges. He was finally able to leave the country and returned to Canada in May 2012.

“Even in the last difficult days, Naser was thinking about Bahrain and his brave colleagues there,” said Marian Botsford Fraser, past chair of Pen International’s Writers in Prison Committee, a close friend who was with Al-Raas and his family in the hospital in recent weeks.

Al-Raas is survived by his wife Zainab Ahmed, who is pregnant, and young son Hassan, to whom the GCHR extends its sympathies.