The Bahraini government’s official news agency, BNA, isn’t known for their hard hitting journalism. The state run media outlet traditionally features at least three pieces a day that read like a who’s who of royal family members “congratulating” one another on their royal accomplishments.

Last night, however, the BNA issued a truly newsworthy, if brief, statement:

His Majesty the King today issued a royal decree granting a special pardon to Nabeel Ahmed Abdul Rasul Rajab for health reasons.

Nabeel Rajab is the President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights who, until last night, was behind bars for “insulting public institutions” vis-a-vis his reports of torture inside Bahrain’s prisons and detention facilities. He also faced a six month sentence for tweets deemed offensive to the regime. In what became the tweet heard round the world, last September Nabeel accused Bahrain’s security forces of being the “first ideological incubator” for the sectarian hatred that fuels local recruitment for terrorist groups like ISIS. Last month’s tragedy in a Shia-mosque in Kuwait, revelations that the bomber had connections to Bahrain, and tweets from defected Bahraini security officials claiming ISIS will soon strike Shias at home tells us that Nabeel may have had a point.

Today, Nabeel’s release is of course cause for celebration. But the impetuous for his release may not be as straight forward as the King’s messengers would have the public believe.

Five days ago, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for “the immediate and unconditional release of all prisoners of conscience, political activists, journalists, human rights defenders and peaceful protesters” in Bahrain. In its resolution, the EU called for the release of Nabeel Rajab by name.

The Bahraini government holds that an act of goodwill led to Nabeel’s release last night. Given what we know about the Bahraini authorities regard for prisoner health, this seems unlikely at best. It’s a hard sell in a country where hundreds of prisoners — many of them behind bars on political and trumped up charges related to free speech, expression, and assembly — are denied adequate medical care and where many have been tortured in custody.

A 2013 report from the government’s ombudsman for prisoner and detention issues found that most prison medical facilities were severely unsanitary and cleaned just once per day. In late September 2014, reports surfaced on Twitter (predominantly in Arabic) that a severe skin rash was spreading amongst inmates at the notoriously overcrowded Jaw Central Prison. Campaigns for medical care initiated by lawyers and family members went largely unanswered by the government.

If deteriorating health were cause for release in Bahrain, authorities would have freed Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja in 2012, when the imprisoned human rights defender and founder of the Bahrain Center for Human Right sustained a 110 day hunger strike that nearly cost him his life in the name of drawing attention to violations in the Kingdom. If severe medical concerns for unjustly imprisoned activists meant freedom in Bahrain, the government would have released rights activist Zahra Al Shaikh, in jail for peaceful assembly, in December 2014. That month, her 7 month old son Hussain, who was living with her in a crowded cell, was so deprived of medical care that the infant had to be rushed to the hospital — only to be returned to his mother’s cell days later. If health concerns resulted in “pardons” for innocent prisoners in Bahrain, hundreds of abused, tortured, and mistreated rights activists would not still be behind bars.

Severe health complications — often due to maltreatment in prison — rarely receive the medical attention they deserve in Bahrain. Next to never do they lead to a pardon.

It would be nice to hope that the release of Nabeel Rajab might be a first step towards a negotiated settlement of the political and human rights crisis in the country but there is little to indicate the Bahraini Government is serious about reform.

Reform does not look like a game of Go-Fish, swapping human rights defenders in and out of prison cells, releasing them just long enough to cause a fire storm on Twitter, celebration in Bahraini villages, and raise hopes in family homes, only to arrest them again three weeks later, as in the case of recently freed and rearrested Ebrahim Sharif. Indeed, many on Twitter joked last night that Nabeel’s family should “confiscate his phone” so they can at least spend the remainder of Ramadan with them at home.

But Nabeel shouldn’t have to be quiet to avoid arrest. His health shouldn’t need to deteriorate, and the EU shouldn’t have to issue resolutions. Nabeel’s freedom is protected by the international and fundamental rights to speech, assembly, and expression, as well as the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders. The freedom of he and his colleagues is a necessary but not sufficient condition for reform in Bahrain, where the families of human rights defenders live with the persistent knowledge that if their loved ones are free tonight, they may not be tomorrow.

Front Line Defenders welcomes the release of human rights defender Nabeel Rajab, and calls upon the Bahraini government to release all human rights defenders who have been arrested, detained, or imprisoned as a result of their legitimate work in defense of human rights.