Bahrain Court of Injustice finds truth to hard to hear, removes telling detainee from Courtroom

Bahrain: Detainee Muneer Habib Thrown Out of Court after Testifying against the Public Prosecutor who Tortured him and Forced him to Confess
25 December, 2013 – Bahrain Center for Human Rights

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights expresses its concern for the Public Prosecution and Court in Bahrain continued fabrication of malicious cases and mock trials that lack the foundations of a fair trial against activists and citizens, where the Judge of the Fourth High Criminal Court Ali Khalifa Al-Dhahrani on 21 November 2013 threw one of the detainees, and he is Mr. Muneer Habib, out of the courtroom after declaring that the present Public Prosecutor (Hamad Al-Bouainain) is the one that tortured him and forced him to make a false confession. This took place during the first hearing in the case of forming a terrorist cell where the accused are: Mr. Sadiq Ali Al-Shakhoori (43 years), Mr. Muneer Habib Saeed (31 years), Mr. Sajjad Al-Alawi (28 years), Ali Hussein Haji (30 years) and Mohammed Jaffar Nasser.

The Court charged Mr. Sadiq Ali Al-Shakhoori with managing and financing a terrorist cell that was founded in 2011 which aims at suspending the provisions of the law and harming national unity, and using violence as a means to achieve that, while it charged the remaining four with joining this cell, which they all denied at Court. At the end of the hearing, the case was adjourned until 8 December 2013, in order to enable the lawyers to look into the case file and to refer Sajjad Al-Alawi and another detainee to the forensic doctor while continuing the imprisonment. The lawyer of the detainee Sajjad Sayed Mohsen Al-Alawi indicated on his Twitter account[i] that he requested that his client gets referred to a forensic doctor, although he had already made such a request two months ago. This could cause the torture marks to fade due to neglecting to refer him at that time. The father of detainee Sajjad Al-Alawi also said that his son told him in a phone call which followed the hearing that the Public Prosecutor who was present at Court was in fact the one who participated in his torture and threatened him with further torture in case he did not sign the confessions that have prepared beforehand.[ii]

Worth mentioning, Mr. Muneer Habib was arrested at dawn on 28 May 2013 after civil forces accompanied by police patrols raided his house. Information indicated that he was tortured at that time in the Criminal Investigation Department, notorious for its systematic torture, to force him to confess to his involvement in carrying out terrorist acts. His family informed the BCHR at an earlier time that Mr. Habib had spoken to the Public Prosecutor – Ali Al-Jazzaf – and had told him that he was exhausted from the severe torture and that he suffers from extreme pain in his hands in addition to pain in various areas of his body, among them head and back. However, the Public Prosecutor did not pay any attention to what he was saying and continued the interrogation to charge him with a series of accusations. Muneer expressed to the Public Prosecutor his fear that the torture may continue to make him confess to other charges; yet the Public Prosecutor ensured that that would be impossible and ordered his release. Nonetheless, orders from supreme bodies were made and his imprisonment was renewed for 60 days pending investigation according to the requisites of the Terrorism Law. The family also stated that it noticed clear torture marks on his body; on their first visit on 3 June 2013, it was clear that he had saggy eyes and his right eye was swollen, in addition to not being able to walk normally. Muneer informed his family that he was subjected to torture on a daily basis and that he was taken to the Criminal Investigation Department for interrogation and his confessions were filmed where he claims leading groups of 14 February youth in various villages, among them Ghurayfah, Juffair, Mahooz and Manama. He was also subjected to severe torture to force him to confess falsely that his sister, a former detainee, Muneera Habib, was involved in the accusation of being affiliated with the 14 February Youth Coalition[iii]. …more