Dubai: A Bahraini appeals court on Sunday upheld a 10-year-jail term against a photojournalist convicted over his presence at a 2012 attack on a police station.

Human rights watchdogs say Ahmad Humaidan was merely covering the Arab Spring-inspired pro-democracy protests that erupted in the Gulf kingdom in early 2011.

But the appeal judges confirmed the sentence handed down by a lower court on March 26, a judicial source said.

The 25-year-old photojournalist, who was in court for the appeal ruling, was convicted of attacking the police station in the village of Sitra, outside the capital, on April 8, 2012.

Humaidan was part of a group of 29, tried together from February 12, 2013 for attacking the police station with Molotov cocktails and other improvised explosives.

Twenty-six of them, including Humaidan, were jailed for 10 years and three were jailed for three years.

Press watchdogs, including Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), have urged Bahraini authorities to release Humaidan and dismiss the charges against him.

Humaidan is a winner of the National Press Club 2014 John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award.

In June, Human Rights Watch deputy Middle East and North Africa director Joe Stork said that “throwing photographers in jail isn’t going to keep either the protests or the accounts of what happens in Bahrain out of the world’s sight”.

Meanwhile, a lawyer for jailed Bahraini activist Abdul Hadi Al Khawaja who has been on hunger strike for a week is seeking his release, and added that authorities have arrested Al Khawaja’s daughter at the airport.

“Abdul Hadi is continuing with the hunger strike he began on August 25” in Jaw prison near Manama, said lawyer Mohammad Al Jishi.

The prisoner’s condition was “stable even though he suffered from hypotension two days ago”, said Al Jishi of the last time he saw his client.

Jailed for life for plotting to overthrow the regime, 54-year-old Al Khawaja staged a 110-day hunger strike in 2012 over his imprisonment.

Bahraini authorities said they will continue to monitor Al Khawaja’s health.

Since the start of his hunger strike, a doctor has seen Al Khawaja “17 times” in five days, the interior ministry’s Ombudsman Office said in a statement reported by official BNA news agency.

BNA also said Al Khawaja sent a letter to the prison authorities saying that “he would go on a hunger strike until he is released”.

Al Khawaja is among defendants handed lengthy jail sentences for their role in the 2011 protests. Seven of them, including Al Khawaja, have been jailed for life while another seven remain at large.

Authorities late on Saturday arrested his daughter, Mariam Al Khawaja — co-director of the Gulf Centre For Human Rights which has offices in Copenhagen and Beirut — upon her arrival at Bahrain International Airport.

She had been “stripped of her nationality”, according to Al Jishi.

Authorities finally granted Mariam a visa but accused her of “attacking policewomen” at the airport and held her in detention “for seven days pending investigation”, he said.