Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what his policy is on the extension of the prison sentence from four years to nine years of Sheikh Ali Salman in Bahrain; and what representations he has made to the government of Bahrain on that extension.

We are concerned about the recent extension of the imprisonment of Al Wefaq’s Secretary-General, Sheikh Ali Salman. We continue to raise his case with the Government of Bahrain. I did so most recently on 2 June when I met with the Bahraini Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs at the biannual UK-Bahrain Joint Working Group meeting, and the Foreign Secretary, my Rt Hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr Hammond) did so most recently with his Bahraini counterpart, Sheikh Khalid Bin Ahmad Al Khalifa on 14 June 2016.