The request was made by Rajab’s defense team, lawyer Muhammad Al-Jishi said.
The court “rejected a request to release Nabeel Rajab and suspend” his sentence, Jishi said on his Twitter account.
Rajab, 48, went on hunger strike on Oct. 6 after the authorities denied his request to attend a three-day condolences gathering for his mother.
The government did release him temporarily for her funeral on Oct. 4, where he “violated” the terms of his release by urging Shiites to continue anti-government protests.
The Bahrain Centre for Human Rights said that Rajab called on mourners to “continue their struggle for rights and democracy,” and argued that his speech was a “peaceful expression of opinion.”
The courts have merged Rajab’s three separate cases of “incitement and illegal assembly” into one single appeal, with the next hearing set for Oct.16.
Separately, the attorney general announced in a statement yesterday that charges against a police officer accused of shooting dead a Shiite protester on Aug. 17 have been dropped.
The policeman had acted in “self-defense” after the man who was killed “attempted to throw a molotov cocktail at him,” the statement said.
Sporadic protests have intensified since a March 2011 deadly crackdown ended month-long protests in central Manama.
According to the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), a total of 80 people have been killed in Bahrain since the violence began on Feb. 14, 2011.
The interior ministry says that more than 700 people, including a number of police officers, have been injured in protests.
