Bahrain Regime conducts Child Terror Campaign with Round-up, Torture and Illegal Detentions

Bahrain: Security Forces Detaining Children
By Albany Tribune – 15 September, 2013

Bahrain security forces routinely detain children without cause and subject them to ill-treatment that may rise to the level of torture, Human Rights Watch said today, based on reports from victims, family members and legal rights activists.

On September 12, 2013, the European Parliament issued a further resolution on the deteriorating rights situation in Bahrain, urging it, among other things, “to respect the rights of juveniles, to refrain from detaining them in adult facilities, and to treat juveniles in accordance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Bahrain is a party”.

“Rounding up kids, throwing them in jail and beating and threatening them is no way for a country to treat its children,” said Joe Stork, acting Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The Bahraini authorities need to look into these allegations and immediately call a halt to any arbitrary arrests and mistreatment of children.”

Information recently obtained from victims, family members, and local rights activists suggests that Bahraini authorities often hold children for long periods in detention and subject them to similar forms of mistreatment as adult detainees, including beatings and threats of torture. The Convention on the Rights of the Child requires governments to protect children from ill-treatment and torture, to give all child detainees – those under 18 – special protections and to separate them from adults in detention.

Bahraini rights groups told Human Rights Watch that the detention of children suspected of involvement in anti-government protests is common. The Bahrain Centre for Human Rights recorded 15 such detentions in August and said that the number of child arrests makes it impossible to document every detention to ascertain its lawfulness and the age of the people involved. The Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights recorded 22 such detentions since August 1.

Murtada al-Muqtad, the brother of an arrested boy, told Human Rights Watch that police arrested a group of 14 people, including 9 boys between the ages of 15 and 17, on September 5 at a swimming pool near the Ain Adhari National Park. He said that they were among a group from the nearby town of Bilad al-Qadim who had rented the swimming pool to enjoy a last night out before school started on September 8.

Al-Muqtad said that Jafar al-Muqtad, the youngest of the group at 15, called his family the day after his arrest, but it was not until September 9 that he was able to tell his family that he was in Dry Dock detention center and describe the circumstances of his arrest. He said that six police cars arrived at the swimming pool at 4 a.m., arrested the 14 people who were still there and blindfolded, punched, and kicked the group of youths while detaining them. He also said that interrogators later mistreated them, pressing them to confess to a September 2 attack on a police officer with Molotov cocktails. On September 11, officers at Dry Dock refused the family’s request to see him.

Murtada al-Muqtad said that his younger brothers had not had access to a lawyer or social worker, though the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by Bahrain and nearly every country in the world, requires that “every child deprived of his or her liberty… has the right to prompt access to legal and other appropriate assistance.”

In a separate incident, more than 10 plain-clothes and uniformed police went to the home of another 15-year-old boy, Ali Rustam, in the village of Al Arad in the early hours of September 8 and arrested him, Bahraini rights activists said. They said that Rustam, who has diabetes and requires four daily injections of insulin, had not had any contact with his family since then. …more