Bahrain: Atrocities and Brutal Crackdown Continue, Rights Organisations Warn
By Anissa Haddadi – November 3, 2011 – IB Times

Activists in Bahrain say that protests against the regime are on-going despite the targeting of civilians by the security forces. The Kingdom’s forces are accused of arresting, and attacking civilians and the Bahrain Centre for human’s rights (BCHR) say that many protesters are being hit in the chest or heads, with several cases of protesters losing their eyes being reported.

While the protests in Syria continue to grab the headlines, less is being said about the current situation in Bahrain. According to rights activists however demonstrations are on-going and so is the brutal crackdown by the regime.

According to The Bahrain Freedom Movement demonstrators took to the street Wednesday to continue protesting against the regime in the cities of Duraz, Samaheej, Daih, Karbabad and Dair with slogans reportedly including “If you become more cruel we will become more determined”.

While reports mention attacks on protesters by the regime’s riot police others say demonstrators had been attacked by armed mercenaries, while villages are also being raided and protesters taken away.

Following months of violence protests now include demands for regime change, the liberation of jailed activists or simply protests against attacks on villages and villagers.

While the regime’s forces were accused of using live ammunitions on demonstrators when the protests first started, reports suggest they have now turned to other weapons directly used against the protestors.

“Government forces use different weapons like birdshot gun, tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets in their attacks,” the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights says.

BCHR reports several cases where civilians taking parts in the protests have lost their eyes and have been forced to live in hiding, fearing that their injury would then make them an even greater target of the security forces.

Among them is Mohammed Yusuf Abu-Saada, who was shot in the eye during a protest and kicked repeatedly by the security forces.

The hospital report states that “patient was involved in demonstrations where he was assaulted with bullet injury to his right eye and was beaten and kicked on the right side of face by police,” BCHR reports.

According to the organisation the police now systematically targets protesters injured during the demonstrations by arresting them when they are taken to hospital.

The centre cites the case of Jaffar Salman, who had been injured on 15 March 2011 and lost both of his eyes. Salman was reportedly arrested by the police when taken to Salmaniya hospital, detained by the regime’s forces and then taken to court.

During his brief trial, he was not given the right to speak, was prevented from having a lawyer or his family with him and was sentenced to two years in prison.

“His family has not visited him in months because he told them he gets tortured and humiliated before and after every visit. His family say that when they did visit him, his 4 year old twins were not allowed to have any physical contact with their father. In most recent phone call Jaffar told his wife that he is not getting treatment for his eyes and that he worries as their condition gets much worse” the organisation points out.

The recent revelations come as Charif Bassioni , an imminent Cairo-born international United Nations war crimes expert, often called “the Father of International Criminal Law”, is due to publish the report of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI).

The commission was established by the ruler of Bahrain, King Hamad bin Isa Al Kahlifa of Bahrain, to look into the incidents that occurred in the kingdom during the period of unrest in February and March 2011.

With the recent revelations suggesting that the ‘incidents’ are still occurring, activists are waiting to see whether the report, expected on the 23rd of November will shed a light on the past and on-going atrocities conducted on civilians. …source

A special report on the torture and human rights violations against the detainees in the case of “Alliance for the Republic”
See Full BCHR Report HERE

All the defendants insisted that what they have done was only practicing their legitimate right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly calling for civil, political, economic and social rights to all the people. Moreover, all their activities did not go beyond the frame of peaceful actions.

This brief report outlines some of what these activists have suffered with torture and human rights violations since their arrest until the time of writing of this report. It includes the following:

I. Violations during the arrest and detention.
II. Torture at the National Security Apparatus (Al Qal’ah).
III. Physical and psychological torture at the military prison (Al Grain).
IV. Violations related to the interrogations done by the National Security Apparatus and the Military Prosecution.
V. Violations related to trials before the Military Court.
VI. Vengeance on relatives of the detainees.
I. Violations during the arrest and detention:

All fourteen detainees in this case said that their arrests took place by raiding their houses or houses of their relatives after midnight. They had not been summoned or informed that they are wanted by any authority. No documents of a judicial warrant for their arrest or search were presented. The following are some examples of detainees’ testimonies about the detention process:

…MORE

Bahrain: Medics Describe Torture in Detention
October 21, 2011 – BCHR

Ill-Treatment, Torture in Detention

Authorities arrested Dr. Rula al-Saffar, 48, head of the Bahrain Nursing Society, on the evening of April 4 after summoning her to the Ministry of Interior’s Criminal Investigation Directorate (CID). She told Human Rights Watch:

I was handcuffed and blindfolded [and] interrogated for seven days. The interrogations started at 3:30 pm and went on until 5 or 6 a.m. the next day. I was electrocuted in my face and my head. They said, “We are going to rape you.” I was held in a very cold cell. They turned on the air conditioner, which made the cell even colder and I had no blanket. They forced me to stand and sit for long hours on the dirty floor.

Al-Saffar said interrogators forced her to sign a confession that she encouraged people to protest, refused treatment to Sunni patients, and stole blood from the blood bank so that protesters could simulate wounds. After 17 days, authorities transferred her to the Women’s Detention Center in Isa Town, where she was held until her release on bail on August 21. Al-Saffar said that during more than four months in detention she was allowed to speak with her family only once, for three minutes, and to meet with them another time for one hour. The special military court sentenced her to 15 years in prison.

Fatima Haji, a rheumatologist sentenced to five years in prison, was arrested on April 17 and held for 22 days. She said interrogators forced her to sign a document saying she had not been tortured and that she would not talk to the international media. She has written about her time in detention on doctorsinchains.org.

[The men started] asking me the size of my underwear, and the size of my bra. [One of them] kept asking me and I [was] not answering and he was hitting my head. My eyes were [in tears] … Then they started making fun and joking about my breast size. Then one of them asked me, “When [was] the last time you saw your husband?” I said, “Two or three days ago.” He said, “So you didn’t have sex for the last two or three days, it seems you want someone to do it with you right now.”

Dr. Ali al-Ekri, 44, told Human Rights Watch that men in military uniforms arrested him on March 17, while he was in the Salmaniya operating room. The special military court sentenced al-Ekri to 15 years on charges of possessing weapons and forming an organization to topple the regime. “I spent 14 days in solitary confinement,” he told Human Rights Watch.” I was constantly beaten by cables, hoses, and fists. One time I was forced to stand up for 24 hours.”

Dr. Ghassan Dhaif, 45, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon at Salmaniya, was arrested on March 19 at Bahrain International Airport while attempting to travel to the United Kingdom with his wife, Dr. Zahra al-Sammak, and their three children. He told Human Rights Watch that he was taken to a room at the airport where masked men in civilian clothes beat him. They then transferred him to the Interior Ministry’s Criminal Investigation Directorate (CID), where he was blindfolded and handcuffed from behind for 21 days.

I spent seven days in a solitary confinement [cell] that was 6 feet by 5 feet. I was blindfolded and handcuffed from behind and was sleep-deprived … I was not allowed to go to the toilet, that is why I had to pee in my pants. I was not allowed to sit or sleep. I collapsed several times. I was beaten every hour … what really hurt was [when] they would cover my ear, temple, and my neck then they would hit me with their hands.

On April 8, Dhaif said, authorities interrogated him for 10 hours uninterruptedly, during which they severely beat him. “I was not allowed to sit or drink water,” he said. “At one point, I was asked to sit down facing the wall. All of a sudden someone kicked my back. I felt like my back was broken.” The same day, after he was hospitalized for a few hours for his back pain, he was forced to sign a confession about 40 pages long.

Dr. Basim Dhaif, 47, brother of Ghassan Dhaif, was arrested at his home on the evening of March 19 by security forces. He told Human Rights Watch:

I was insulted and beaten in front of my wife and children at my home. In detention I was forced to stand for more than 12 days except [when] eating. I was blindfolded and handcuffed from behind … in total I was tortured for 26 days in CID. Eventually I was forced to sign confession papers under threat that they will hurt my family. I didn’t know what the contents [of these papers were].

Zahra Al-Sammak, 45, an anesthesiologist at Salmaniya sentenced to 5 years in prison, and Nada Dhaif, a dentist sentenced to 15 years, also told Human Rights Watch that they were ill-treated in detention.

On September 7, the authorities released al-Ekri and the other medics still in detention on bail, including Ghassan and Basim Dhaif. …source

International Committee of The Red Cross
Report on Treatment of “High Value” Detainees
February, 2007

Main Element of the CIA detention Program
1.1. Arrest and Transfer
1.2 Continuous Solitary Confinement and Incommunicado Detention
1.3 Other Methods of Ill-treatment
1.3.1 Suffocation by Water
1.3.2 Prolonged stress standing
1.3.3 Beating by use of a collar
1.3.4 Beating and kicking
1.3.5 Confinement in a box
1.3.6 Prolonged nudity
1.3.7 Sleep deprivation and use of loud music
1.3.8 Exposure to cold temperature/cold water
1.3.9 Prolonged use of handcuffs and shackles
1.3.10 Threats
1.2.11 Force Shaving
1.3.12 Deprivation/restricted provision of solid food
1.4 Further Element of the Detention Regime
2.0 Conditions of Detention in Later Stages
3.0 Health Provision and Role of Medical Staff
4.0 Legal Aspect Related to Undisclosed Detention
5.0 Fate of Other Persons who Passed Through the CIA Detention Program
Conclusion
Annex 1.
Annex 2.
Read Report HERE

Elderly Shiite ‘beaten to death’ by Bahrain police
The Shiite group Al-Wefaq declares the death of one of its prominent leaders after police forces attacked him, being one of many aggressions committed by the Sunni regime against the opposition Shiites
AFP , Thursday 3 Nov 2011

The elderly father of the second in command of Bahrain’s largest Shiite opposition group Al-Wefaq died of his injuries on Thursday after riot police attacked him a day earlier, the organisation said.

“Ali Hasan al-Dehi, 70, was attacked by riot police forces Wednesday evening” and died early Thursday, Al-Wefaq’s website reported.

His son, Hussein al-Dehi, is deputy head of Al-Wefaq.

The statement said the elder Dehi had told one of his sons, who had arrived home to find him on the floor, that “he had been beaten by riot police.”

Al-Wefaq member and former MP Sayed Hadi Moussaoui told AFP police were dispersing a protest in the western village of Dehi, when the man was attacked.

Moussaoui said members of Dehi household were harassed several times by the authorities, adding that the dead man’s wife had been “insulted” in the past without giving further details.

Earlier this year, Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy crushed pro-democracy protests, spearheaded by the majority Shiites, with the help of troops from other Gulf states, such as Saudi Arabia.

Twenty-four people died during the crackdown, between mid-February and mid-March, according to official figures from Manama.
Four protesters have since died in custody.

The Gulf kingdom is awaiting a report by an independent commission of inquiry into the crackdown, which is expected on November 23.

Though mass protests have ended, tensions remain high as the trials of dozens of opposition figures and protesters continue in the capital. …source

More protests as the latest martyr is buried; an elderly Bahraini
Bahrain Freedom Movement – 03/11/2011

An elderly man was martyred this morning after being pursued and hit by members of the Death Squads operated by the royal court. Hajj Ali Hassan, 70, was returning home last night when he was set upon by those heavily-armed killers.

There was a protest against the regime near his house at the time. He was spotted by one of his sons as he opened the front door of the family’s house. The elderly man was unconscious for a short while with blood coming out of his mouth and head and soaking his clothes. Few minutes later he woke up and was askedd: Have you been attacked? He said: Yes. He was immediately transferred to Al Nu’aim Hospital where photos taken by his relatives show him in a bad state with blood on his clothes. He was immediately transferred to Salmaniya Hospital (which is run by the military) where he died a short time later. It is now clear that after the beating he had received, he was so frightened by the scene and the attacks that he went into coma before being transferred to the other hospital. He remained at the Intensive Care Unit for a short while before he passed away. This is yet another tragic case in which a Bahraini citizen was murdered for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, facing the murderous gangs operated by the regime. His son, Sheikh Hussain Al Daihi is a senior figure of Al Wefaq Society. On Tuesday the body of another martyr; Riyadh Abdulla Rashid, 45, had been buried after he had succumbed to wounds inflicted by the regime’s forces. He had lost the sight of one eye as a result of beating.
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