Posts from — September 2011

A second letter was leaked from the Dry Dock prison to “Bahrain Mirror” by Ebrahim Al-Demistani the Secretary General of Bahrain Nursing Society

Bahrain Mirror (Exclusive):A second letter was leaked from the Dry Dock prison to “Bahrain Mirror”. It was written by Ebrahim Al-Demistani the Secretary General of Bahrain Nursing Society. It was written on 9th August 2011.

Al-Demistani was born in 1970. A Chief Nurse in Aluminium Bahrain Company(Alba) and a certified international trainer of trainers from the American First Aid organisation since 2007. He trained hundreds of paramedics from Bahrain and the GCC countries. He carried out scores of workshops in safety and first aids and sprots injuries for Ministry of Education employees. He presented scores of lectures for the school students in their various stages.

During March events, Al-Demistani lost his 17 year old son. In the evening of March 13, 2011, an

unidentified car deliberately ran over the young man on the bridge that overlooked the Pearl Roundabout. It fled quickly. That day witnessed volatile events, in the morning the sit-in at the Financial Harbour was attacked, then the Roundabout, and what the university saw of armed people attack. All of that coincided with the spread of organised armed gangs in all the regions of Bahrain. They were labelled Baltagiya (thugs or bullies).

That painful and tragic loss did not stop the regime from arresting Ebrahim Al-Demistani in a systematic intensive campaign that targeted the medical staff who were a thorn in the regime throat that was hard to remove. In his leaked letter, Al-Demistani asked that his letter to be published to tell of the detainees ordeal in the Dry Dock prison, the deliberate negligence of their health care citing what he suffered personally of health care negligence, stressing that others suffered similarly. That was shown in a way or another in the first leaked letter of the psychological, health and physical deterioration that the medical staff experience in the prison.

Al-Demistani explains: “I was beaten directly on the vertebral column and the coccyx bone for seven continuous days since the start of my arrest on 3rd April 2011. I felt horrible pain. After I was taken to the Dry Dock prison on 8th April I was checked up by the clinic doctor there who is a resident doctor. He continued treating me by tranquillisers; Cataflam, Voltaren and PrednIsolone. I felt numbness and tingling in the soles of my feet”. Al-Demistani’s excruciating pain was not alleviated. So he frequented the prison clinic.

But did the treatment plan change? Al-Demistani says in his letter: “I continued to visit that doctor for about 15 to 18 times, without x-raying me or transferring me to a specialist”. He remained all the time suffering pain that he did no identify its cause exactly except he felt it after the torture and harsh beating that he suffered in the first days of his detention. However, the doctor did not bother to make any move to reveal the cause of the pain and the tingling that persisted for about fours months.

Al-Demistani added: “Just three weeks ago, I was transferred by the resident doctor in the Dry Dock prison clinic. Today I went for my first physiotherapy session in the hospital at the Fortress. The session took only 15 minutes from 9:00-9:15, then I sat waiting for the bus to go back to the Dry Dock prison. I waited for four complete hours. I asked to lie down because of the severe pain that I was not able to sit any more. I was allowed to lie down in a bed in a ward where a number of hunger strikers detainees from the Central Region were kept”. Al-Demistani added in his letter: “After the doctor in charge came he asked me why am I lying in the bed? I told him of the pain I felt, and that I asked the doctor in the Dry Dock prison clinic to transfer me to an orthopaedic four months ago and till now I was not transferred. The doctor asked the appointments employee to book me an appointment for the following day which was Wednesday 10th August 2011. I was booked that appointment, but after 15 minutes he told me I could see the consultant. I saw Dr. Adel Al-Sheikh an orthopaedic and told him the whole story. He verified the number of my visits to the Dry Dock prison clinic from the computer that numbered 18 visits. After that he ordered an x-ray for me whose result was a fracture in the coccyx bone”.

Now, after four months Al-Demistani came to know that the excruciating pain he endured for four months was because of a fracture in his vertebra. All that time the resident doctor in the Dry Dock prison clinic did not bother to do any check-up to diagnose the cause of the pain that the detainee suffered despite his repetitive visits to no avail.

Al-Demistani wrote that the doctor: “told me at present they can’t perform surgically for fear of complications, and he will depend on tranquillisers (Olfer) and physiotherapy, and the fracture needs nine months”. Al-Demstrani colleagues in the prison tell that he cannot sit because of the fracture and he suffers severe pain when sitting or praying.

So Al-Demistani finds himself back-broken twice. The first time when the thugs murdered his young son and he picked his rose a martyr in his hands. The second time when the torturers broke his back and did not care to treat him. …source

[cb editor: thanks for your courage Mohamed and the well needed smile as I watched you running with the colors! It’s simply poetic when an act of patriotism, parading the flag, becomes a crime. It makes clear the People have Won the Nation! ]

Local activists gear up for G8, NATO summits planned for city
Chicago Tribune – August 28, 2011 – By Andy Grimm Tribune reporter

Activists are planning massive demonstrations to coincide with the G8 and NATO summits in Chicago scheduled for spring 2012, with crowds of protesters likely to reach “tens of thousands,” organizers said.

More than 160 members representing about 50 groups from across the U.S. and Canada gathered Sunday at the Chicago-Kent College of Law to discuss strategy and start planning two large-scale protests and a march that during the week-long joint summit, which is set for mid-May.

The G8 and similar economic forums have for more than a decade drawn thousands of demonstrators. With the world economy in turmoil and NATO leaders set to discuss Afghanistan war policy, the joint summit should draw protesters on behalf of a wide array of causes, activists said.

Chicago could see crowds of protesters similar to the 35,000 or so activists who descended on St. Paul, Minn., during the 2008 Republican National Convention, said Joe Lombardo, co-coordinator for the New York-based United National Anti-War Committee.

“With the war (and) the global economy as they are, and the (U.S. presidential) election in full swing next spring, I think it will have the potential to be bigger than the protests in Minnesota,” said Lombardo, a retired New York state government worker who has participated in demonstrations since the 1960s. “Those issues are not going to go away (by May) and Chicago is a larger city than some of the other places they’ve had these summits recently.”

Chicago activist Joe Iosbaker, who helped organize the RNC protests in 2008 and whose home was raided by FBI agents last October, said he applied for permits to hold demonstrations in Daley Plaza and Federal Plaza downtown the day the White House announced the city would host the summits. …more

Welcome to Bahrain, the Empire’s Torture Island
written by Tom Burghardt – Pacific Free Press

Torture Island: Where Offshore Meets the National Surveillance State
by Tom Burghardt l Antifascist Calling…
From shady Wall Street banks and investment firms that rob people blind, to Western governments that prattle on about “democracy” and “human rights” while their favorite butchers torture and kill their own citizens, it’s a sick, sad world growing sicker and sadder by the hour.

It certainly can’t hurt when the U.S. Fifth Fleet has the back of those doing the killing, or when the killers are pampered ne’er-do-wells, a fabulously wealthy clique of hereditary princes for whom the word “medieval” was invented, who just so happen to lord over one of the planet’s financial bolt holes.

Last month, Bloomberg Markets Magazine revealed that when “Bahraini jailers armed with stiff rubber hoses” beat 39-year-old school administrator and human rights activist Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar in a windowless dungeon in Manama, his jailers were armed “with another kind of weapon: transcripts of his text messages and details from personal mobile phone conversations.”

“It was amazing,” Al Khanjar told investigative journalists Vernon Silver and Ben Elgin. “How did they know about these?”

The answer is simple: from computers loaded with spy kit sold to Bahraini royals “by Siemens AG (SIE), and maintained by Nokia Siemens Networks and NSN’s divested unit, Trovicor GmbH, according to two people whose positions at the companies gave them direct knowledge of the installations.”

Back in February, political floodgates opened across the Middle East as American-allied dictators were toppled by enraged citizens in Tunisia and Egypt, and threatened to do the same in Bahrain when pro-democracy demonstrators took to the streets across the island nation.

The Al Khalifa clan responded as royals are wont to do: with brute force and considerable help from U.S. and Saudi “friends.” Scores were killed and many hundreds of others, including medical personnel, were seized and “disappeared” into regime black holes.

As The Guardian reported, while “Bahrain’s security forces are the backbone of the Al Khalifa regime,” in recent years “large numbers of their personnel are recruited from other countries, including Jordan, Pakistan and Yemen” and “are reviled as mercenaries by Bahrainis.”

But what of the gaggle of Western firms who hit the “sweet spot” selling despotic potentates everything from high-tech spy gear to machine guns and lethal gases: will they be “reviled as mercenaries” by media in the “democratic” West?

‘Institutionalized Corruption’

It’s hardly surprising that one of Siemens offloaded intelligence units, Trovicor, did a brisk business with Bahrain’s secret state. After all, considering the firm’s dubious track record and a corporate culture where “bribery was just a line item” according to The New York Times, why wouldn’t they?

More than two years ago when a spate of corruption prosecutions were settled, Siemens wound up paying some $1.6 billion to the U.S. government under provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, “the largest fine for bribery in modern corporate history.”

Former mid-level executive, Reinhard Siekaczek, told reporters Siri Schubert and T. Christian Miller that “he was one of several people who arranged a torrent of payments that eventually streamed to well-placed officials around the globe, from Vietnam to Venezuela and from Italy to Israel.”

“What is striking about Mr. Siekaczek’s and prosecutors’ accounts of those dealings,” the Times averred, “which flowed through a web of secret bank accounts and shadowy consultants, is how entrenched corruption had become at a sprawling, sophisticated corporation that externally embraced the nostrums of a transparent global marketplace built on legitimate transactions.”

The former executive said that between “2002 to 2006 he oversaw an annual bribery budget of about $40 million to $50 million at Siemens. Company managers and sales staff used the slush fund to cozy up to corrupt government officials worldwide.”

“Bribery was Siemens’s business model,” Uwe Dolata, the spokesman for the association of federal criminal investigators in Germany told the Times. “Siemens had institutionalized corruption.”

Such lucrative inducements to officials were meant to maintain the firm’s “competitive edge” overseas in the branch Siekaczek oversaw, “which sold telecommunications equipment.”

High-tech accouterments which ended up in the hands of Abdul Ghani Al Khanjar’s torturers.

Ahmed Aldoseri, the director of information and communications technologies at Bahrain’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority told Bloomberg Markets, “If they have a transcript of an SMS message, it’s because the security organ was monitoring the user at their monitoring center.” …more

Time Magazine and the Fake Hezbollah Interview
By As’ad AbuKhalil – Sun, 2011-09-04 13:25

The fake interview by Nicholas Blanford of a supposed Hezbollah member allegedly implicated in Hariri’s killing was a journalistic scandal and a clear intelligence ploy. The interview published in Time Magazine presumably intended to bring the accused out—electronically speaking—in order to locate him. The story reveals a lot about the way in which the Western press operates. This is not the first time that coverage of the Middle East has been associated with scandals and propaganda. Western media have served as government tools since the US war on Iraq in 1990. It only got worse over time, especially since Sep. 11.

The US press is more obedient to the government than, say the British or French press, because the former lacks experienced experts on the Middle East who can make foreign policy decisions independent of government pressures. European media are more likely to employ experts who reside in the region and who know the languages. In the US press, the tendency is to rely on roving correspondents who know little on every country they cover, and on stringers who are filtered through the Zionist foreign editor in New York City. This is not the first time that coverage by Blanford reaches a bizarre level. Blanford, before the 2006 war, specialized in counting (in Western media) the number of missiles owned by Hezbollah and the amount of cash that Iran gives to Hezbollah. No one dared to ask Blanford where he got this information that even intelligence services don’t possess, although his estimates of Hezbollah missiles curiously matched Israeli intelligence estimates cited in the Israeli media. And only weeks ago, Blanford wrote a story in which a Hezbollah “fighter” brags to him about Hezbollah’s smuggling operations. Blanford never explained why a Hezbollah fighter would confide in him—him of all people, given his pro-Israeli and pro-Hariri tendencies.
[Read more →]

[cb editor: this fools ego know no bounds. ]

HRH the Crown Prince receives congratulatory cable from USA President Barack Obama

Manama, September 4th — (BNA) His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander received a congratulatory cable from the friendly USA President Barack Obama in which the His Excellency expressed felicitations to His Royal Highness the Crown Prince on the occasion of Eid Al-Fitr and wished His Royal Highness ample health and happiness and the Kingdom of Bahrain’s people further advancement and progress.

…source

Global campaign for release of former Kent student

By Steve Knight, chief county reporter Saturday, September 3, 2011
8:00 AM

Scholars from around the world are campaigning for the safe release of a former University of Kent student imprisoned in Bahrain.

Professor Masaud Jahromi, who graduated in 2001 with a PhD in telecommunication networking, was arrested on April 14 this year but has yet to be charged with any offence despite spending almost five months behind bars.

The married father-of-one, who is currently chairman of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Ahlia University’s College of Mathematical Sciences and Information Engineering in Bahrain, also suffers from Hepatitis C and has allegedly been refused treatment by his captors.

Eager to raise awareness of Prof Jahromi’s plight is the international Scholars at Risk (SAR) organisation, which exists to promote academic freedom and to defend the human rights of scholars worldwide.

A large number of British universities are members of the network, including the University of Kent.

SAR executive director Robert Quinn said: “Since his arrest, Prof Jahromi was reportedly held in an undisclosed location and initially had no communication with his family.

“According to reports, the police broke into his house in the middle of the night, threatened and harassed members of his family, confiscated the family’s laptops and beat Prof Jahromi. We understand now he was initially brought to AlGalaa prison and later transferred to Dry Dock Prison.

“He has yet to be informed of the charges against him. A date for his hearing has not yet been set in spite of the fact he has been detained for more than four months – in apparent disregard for international standards of due process, fair trial and detention.”

Based at New York University, Scholars at Risk was launched as part of the University of Chicago’s human rights programme in 1999. …more

Unjustly detained blogger, on hunger strike, could die in prison
Published on Saturday 3 September 2011 – by français Partager – Reports without Borders

The international press freedom NGO Reporters Without Borders is very worried about the fate of the blogger Maikel Nabil Sanad and calls for his immediate and unconditional release in order to preserve the democratic nature of Egypt’s political transition.

Freeing the first prisoner of conscience since the revolution would be a powerful symbolic gesture, one that the entire international community would see as a sign of a commitment to openness.

Sanad, who began a hunger strike on 23 August, is now refusing to drink and already has heart problems. Detained since March, his physical condition is very alarming and needs urgent intervention.

“While Sanad’s hunger strike is a personal decision, the authorities are responsible for the cause, an unjust and anti-democratic political imprisonment,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said. “If he does not resume drinking, he could very soon die in detention and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces would have to take full responsibility. Held for exercising his right to freedom of expression, Sanad must not become the symbol of a repressive and unjust post-Mubarak Egypt.”

Aged 25, Sanad was arrested by military police on the night of 28 March and was tried by a military court, which sentenced him to three years in prison on 10 April on charges of insulting the armed forces, publishing false reports and disturbing public order.

Neither his family nor his lawyer has been able to see him of late. He used to be allowed one visit a week that this has been reduced to two visits a month. …source

Candle vigil for martyred Ali Al Sheikh Jawad
Shiapost – September 3, 2011

Candle vigil was organized in Sitarah for martyred Ali Al Sheikh Jawad. Thousands took part in the candle vigil, several other candle vigils were organized in other villages at the same time as the one in Sitrah. Ali Al Sheikh Jawad, the 14-year-old boy was killed on Wednesday after Eid al-Fitr prayers. He was shot at close range, directly in the [face back of the neck], by a tear gas canister fired by Saudi-backed regime forces in the southern city of Sitra.

After the killing of a 14 year old boy, instead of turning to violence, people of Bahrain hold candle vigils. Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets across the Persian Gulf state since the incident to condemn the murder of Jawad.

Jawad was killed just three days after a televised speech by Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa on August 28, in which he announced a decision to pardon the demonstrators arrested during the popular uprising that began in February. …source

Everyone, Republican or otherwise has their own particular part to play.No part is too great or too small, no one is too old or too young to do something. Bobby Sands(1954-1981)

Bobbys Sands and his ten comrades were true heroes. These young men were willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice rather than be branded criminals. Criminals don’t starve themselves to death for their beliefs. Anyone with an ounce of sense and not blinded by hatred can see this. Ta ar la anois.

The hunger strike of 1981 was one of, if not the most influential periods in the IRA’s long campaign to remove Britains’ role from irish politics. It not only thwarted Britain’s plans to criminalise the IRA prisoners in the H-Blocks, but concentrated world wide media attention on the war in Ireland, paving the way for Sinn Fein’s entrance into the political arena and the electoral successes that followed.

…source

Bahraini medical professionals, who were arrested at the start of a government crackdown on pro-democracy protests earlier this year, have gone on hunger strike, their relatives say.

They have been held in jail for almost six months, while their trial continues in a military court.

Bahraini and international human rights organisations have called the trials a farce.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Khalil Al-Mazrooq, a former chairman of the Shia bloc Al Wefaq, said: “The trial of Bahraini medics in a military tribunal is against the country’s constitution. Article 105 of the constitution says civilians should be tried in civilian courts only.”

Adel Al Moawda, chairman of parliamentary foreign affairs, defence and national security in Bahrain, said the medics would receive a fair trial.

Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford reports. …source

More Bahrain detainees join hunger strike
The Associated Press – Posted on Sat, Sep. 03, 2011 04:30 AM

A rights group in Bahrain says more detainees are joining a hunger strike to protest ongoing trials from the crackdown on demonstrations for greater rights by the Gulf nation’s Shiite majority.

A statement Saturday by the Bahrain Center for Human Rights says the hunger strike now includes nearly 20 doctors who are jailed and face anti-state charges linked to the protests against Bahrain’s ruling Sunni dynasty.

The trials are scheduled to resume on Wednesday.

The Center says at least two other prominent activists, Abdul Jalil al-Singace and Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, have also begun hunger strikes in solidarity. The activists were sentenced to life in prison in June.

Bahrain protests began in February inspired by other Arab uprisings. …source

Jailed Bahrain Shiite activists on hunger strike
(AFP) – 3 hours ago

DUBAI — Two Bahraini Shiite activists jailed for life in June for “plotting to overthrow” the Sunni ruling family have gone on hunger strike, the daughter of one of them told AFP on Saturday.

Human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja and opposition Haq movement member Abduljalil al-Singace stopped eating on Tuesday in solidarity with detainees held at Bahrain’s Dry Dock prison, Zainab al-Khawaja said.

She said that the detainees, who were arrested as part of a March crackdown on Shiite-led pro-democracy protests, had called their hunger strike in protest at the government’s failure to honour promises to release them.

“I am concerned about my father’s health,” Khawaja said. “He was beaten when detained and his jaw was broken. They also beat him repeatedly on his jaw in court. The doctor had told him to eat well for his health to improve.

“He has already lost too much weight in prison and yesterday he called me and said his blood sugar level has dropped,” she added.

Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who also holds Danish citizenship, was jailed for life with Singace and six other opposition activists in June.

The Bahrain interior ministry says 24 people, including four policemen, were killed in the month-long protests that erupted in mid-February.

Security forces backed by troops from Bahrain’s Gulf neighbours crushed the protest movement.

The opposition says that scores of people were arrested, and many of them tortured. Hundreds more were dismissed from their jobs.

Four people have been sentenced to death and three to life imprisonment after being convicted of the killing of two policemen during the protests. Nine others were jailed for 20 years after being found guilty of abducting a policeman. …source

Former prisoners bear witness to Bahrain’s security operation
by Zoi Constantine – Sep 1, 2011 – The National

MANAMA- Bahrain’s king this week dismissed charges against some people detained during crackdowns against pro-democracy protests and allowed compensation to prisoners abused by security forces.

But as more Bahrainis have been released from prison in recent weeks, a clearer picture has emerged about the conditions in which they were held and the treatment handed out by members of the security forces. One piece of grainy video footage posted on YouTube shows two men scrambling to get away, as several police jeeps follow them along a dusty Bahraini village street.

Policemen can be seen hanging out of the vehicles, weapons pointed towards the fleeing men as shots ring out and both fall to the ground, before the jeeps drive off.

The scene is just one of many posted online from the height of the government’s security operation in March. Like many of those wounded during the violence that ensued, one of the young men seen on the video was treated in hospital for serious injuries after he was hit at close range with birdshot.

Several days after Bahraini security forces took over the hospital where he was being treated, he disappeared, leaving his family fearing the worst.

That man was Mohammed, the only name he was prepared to give when The National tracked him down. After he was shot, he says, he was taken to a military hospital, where he was beaten as he lay blindfolded and tethered by his hands and feet to a hospital bed for more than three weeks.

Mohammed, in his twenties, remained in detention for the next four months, moving between hospitals and prison medical and detention facilities.

The National Blogs

He is just one of many who speak of arbitrary detention, physical mistreatment and lack of access to legal representation or their families. Others say the screams of other prisoners or threats were as close as they came to torture. There have also been reports that jail conditions improved recently.

The Bahraini government has released scores of prisoners in the past month, including some high-profile figures such as Matar Matar, a former MP and senior figure within Al Wefaq, the country’s main opposition group. Also among those released was Ayat Al Gormezi, 20, who was arrested after she read an anti-regime poem at a rally in March. Ms Al Gormezi has said she was severely beaten during her time in prison.

In a speech on Sunday, King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa said that Bahrain’s Supreme Court would oversee compensation payments for victims of abuse or for families of those killed during unrest, including security forces.

The recently set-up Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry – a fact-finding body charged with investigating human-rights violations since the crisis in Bahrain broke out in February – has so far facilitated the release of at least 157 detainees.

However, it is still not clear exactly how many people linked to the protest movement remain in jail. The Bahraini government has not responded to queries on the issue, but local human-rights activists estimate that there are still between 500 and 600 people tied to the protests in jail.

On Tuesday, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called for the release of all prisoners detained for exercising their right to freedom of expression. The rights body also called on the Bahraini government to release the names of all of those arrested since March 15.

For those who have been released, the commission is in the process of investigating reports of mistreatment and torture, with forensic medical experts expected to help with the inquiry.

Mohammed’s family says he has already submitted to investigators his account of what happened to him after he was shot by police in March.

Speaking recently to The National, Mohammed recalled how he left his house to go to the supermarket, when he was caught up in a large gathering that turned into a confrontation with security forces.

Lifting his T-shirt, he showed that his back was still dotted with scars left by the birdshot. Around 150 of the small metal pellets remain lodged in his body. A long scar where he had emergency surgery has left his stomach distended and misshapen. He said he was even hit on his wound while in hospital. …more

…watch how many armed adult men it takes to detain this kid.

Joe Trippi doing P.R. for Bahrain
The Democratic political operative joins Gulf kingdom’s push to burnish its reputation after crackdown on protests
By Justin Elliott – Thursday, Sep 1, 2011 11:45 ET – Salon.com

The latest political operative to sign on as a public relations guru for the Persian Gulf kingdom of Bahrain is former Howard Dean for president campaign manager Joe Trippi.

Bahrain’s Information Affairs Authority will receive “strategic communications counsel, media relations, and third party outreach support” from Trippi as well as Sanitas International, a Washington public relations firm.

Since violently suppressing a Shia protest movement earlier this year, Bahrain’s Sunni ruling family has retained at least two pricey Washington lobbying and law firms to help it beat back negative attention. The Trippi/Sanitas deal marks the third such contract in recent months.

While the hottest period of the confrontation between the government and the protesters was earlier this year, the situation has not cooled down entirely. Bahrain’s regime has recently made headlines for shutting down the local office of Doctors Without Borders and for the death this week of a 14-year-old boy at a demonstration after he was reportedly hit by a police tear gas canister.

Details on how much Trippi and Sanitas will be paid is expected in a future Justice Department filing.

Reached this morning, Trippi told me he has years of experience in the region, pointing to work he did during Iraq’s parliamentary election last year and to his Twitter avatar, which is shaded green in support of Iran’s protest movement.

“This is one of the progressive countries in the Middle Eastern Gulf,” said Trippi, when asked about criticisms of Bahrain by human rights groups. “I have no problem working for them.”

Trippi said he also sees the hand of Iran in the political crisis in Bahrain.

He added: “They’ve got a commission looking into those [reported human rights] violations, and I think they’re sincere in not only addressing them but also getting to the bottom of what happened.”

Trippi is also currently working for Massachusetts Democratic Senate hopeful Bob Massie. …more

Bahrain tensions grow as protests persist
September 02, 2011 02:06 AM

DUBAI: It’s become a nightly duel in Bahrain; security forces and anti-government protesters waging hit-and-run clashes in one of the simmering conflicts of the Arab Spring.

So far, the skirmishes have failed to gel into another serious challenge to the Gulf nation’s Western-backed monarchy after crushing a reform rebellion months ago. But there are sudden signs that Shiite-led demonstrators could be poised to raise the stakes again on the strategic island, which is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet.

Hundreds of demonstrators Wednesday made their boldest attempt in months to reclaim control of a central square in the capital Manama, which was the symbolic hub of the protest movement after it began in February. Riot police used buses to block roads and flooded streets with tear gas to drive back the marchers before dawn.

Hours later, mourners gathered in a Shiite village in another part of Bahrain for a 14-year-old boy, Ali Jawad Ahmad, they claim was killed by security forces.

Clashes flared until early Thursday across the oil hub area of Sitra before the boy’s burial, where about 10,000 Bahrainis chanted slogans against the Gulf state’s king.

“Down with the regime,” chanted some of hundreds of people in the funeral procession. “More protests.”

Some of them waved the flag of the Libyan rebels, who are closing in on the remnants of Colonel Moammar Gadhafi’s government.

Bahrain remains the outlier of the Arab revolts.

Its Sunni rulers have managed to hold their ground – and even tighten their grip with military help from neighboring Saudi Arabia – against majority Shiites demanding a greater political voice. Washington and Western allies have denounced the punishing crackdowns, but been mild when it comes to Bahrain’s ruling dynasty. The possible risks from a harder line appear too great. They include jeopardizing key Arab military relationships on Iran’s doorstep.

Washington’s Gulf Arab allies argue that any gains for Bahrain’s Shiites could open the door for influence by Iran’s Shiite regime.

Bahrain’s Shiite leaders strongly deny any links to Iran. They note that their fight for greater rights goes back decades – and is now re-energized by the pro-democracy wave across the Arab world.
…more