Bahrain’s king has pardoned 457 prisoners to mark his 25th anniversary as the island nation’s ruler, with one activist saying many of those freed appeared to be political prisoners. The announcement Wednesday night by the state-run Bahrain News Agency marks another mass release of prisoners in the Persian Gulf kingdom that has faced repeated crackdowns on all dissent in the years following its 2011 Arab Spring protests. There was no immediate list of names for the prisoners released by the order of King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, who has ruled Bahrain first as its emir in 1999 before Bahrain became a kingdom in 2002.
