Many, including Rajab himself, correlate his freedom to a strong personal relationship with those international figures, many of whom were in Manama for the first months of the island kingdom's Shi'a revolt.

In the last year, he's attended conferences across the Arab world and has traveled to Washington, D.C., to publicize the ongoing violence against what he says are peaceful protests against the monarchy, which is made up of the country's Sunni minority.

"He has deftly used his high media profile and connections with Western diplomats to stay out of prison," says Barak Barfi, a New America Foundation fellow who was on the ground in Manama last March. "Nevertheless, his plight has been much better than that of other regime critics such as Singace, who, lacking Rajab's high-level ties, find themselves imprisoned for long periods of time."

But Rajab hasn't had an easy time, and Bahrain revolution is struggling.

At a rally outside the King's palace in Riffa last March, he stood on a dirt field, providing information and reassurance to protesters and journalists. In buoyant spirits, he marveled at the size of the crowd. At the same rally, fellow activist al-Singace, briefly freed from prison in a government show of goodwill, parted the crowd in his wheelchair, flowers thrown at his feet.

Rajab is the only highly visible Bahraini activist still able to attend those marches, which though largely ignored by international media, have happened most Fridays for the last year, a testament to the stubborn will of the country's activist corps.

Rajab says there is "violence every night" inflicted by security forces on the streets of Bahrain's poorer Shi'a neighborhoods. His claim is backed up by a constant stream of information coming from cyber activists based on those very streets.

The devastation, they say, comes largely from the tear gas grenades that are often shot into houses or overhead into a crowd, as they were that day on the field in Riffa.

"It's like shooting a cannon at someone," Rajab says. "They're supposed to be rolled on the ground. What they're doing on these crowded, small streets is throwing tear gas into people's homes. It's especially complicated if you have asthma or chronic disease."

In the last year, two physical attacks on Rajab, allegedly by government forces, made global headlines. "His good relations with Western governments have not been able to prevent the regime from persistently harassing him," Barfi says.

For a period of months last year, Rajab was forbidden to leave Bahrain.

In his broken English, he says the family home in Bani Jamrah, a hard-hit Shi'a neighborhood in Manama, has become a favored target for police -- and that his wife and two children, all of whom suffer from asthma, breathe tear gas most nights.

"I am one of the people," he said in January, by phone from Tunis. "I have taken a role in the uprising because I believe we need to stand up. It's dangerous and costly, but it's the only thing we feel will bring about change."