Alaa Abd El-Fattah & Nabeel Rajab

Nabeel Rajab, who was arrested on Saturday 5th of May, is a lifelong Bahraini activist and critic of the Al Khalifa regime. A member of a formerly staunch pro-regime family, Rajab has agitated for reform in Bahrain since his return from university in 1988. Along with the Bahraini-Danish human rights defender Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, he helped establish the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights in 2002. After years of working on hot issues in Bahrain, such as discrimination among sects and migrant labor rights, he became a face for the Bahrain uprising of February 14 2011, after a courageous sit-in at Pearl Roundabout. Since then, he has been a public face for the revolution, waging a social media war on Twitter with PR companies working for the regime. After al-Khawaja was imprisoned, he led protests for his release. He has endured beatings, arrests and legal harrassment for engaging in pro-democracy demonstrations. On Saturday 5th of May, he was arrested at Manama airport , and charged the next day with encouraging and engaging in “illegal protests.” Nabeel Rajab remains in detention at the time of broadcast. Alaa Abd El-Fattah is a longtime Egyptian political activist, programmer and blogger. He was imprisoned for 45 days in 2006 for protesting under the Mubarak regime, and again imprisoned for 68 days for protesting under the post-revolutionary military government, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). He also played a role in the Egyptian revolution of 2011. Initially abroad, El-Fattah helped route around Mubarak’s internet blockade. At the height of the protests he returned to Egypt and participated in the defense of Tahrir Square against security forces. It was after Mubarak stepped down, engaging in protests against the SCAF, that he was again arrested and imprisoned in October 2011. El-Fattah’s parents were human rights campaigners under Anwar Sadat; his sister Mona Seif became a Twitter star during the 2011 Egyptian revolution, and is a fou