International Community urged to form it’s own UN Standards Compliant criminal investigation team and demand access to Bahrain

HRW: Bahrain: Investigate New Death in Custody
Thorough, Prompt, and Impartial Inquiries Needed
April 13, 2011

(Manama) – The death of businessman and activist Kareem Fakhrawi on April 12, 2011, shows the urgent need for thorough and impartial investigations into allegations of torture, Human Rights Watch said today. It was the fourth detainee death reported by the Bahrain government in nine days.

At Fakhrawi’s funeral on April 13 in Manama’s Hoora district, a crowd of mourners demanded to see his corpse because of concerns he had been tortured. They wrestled the shrouded body from pallbearers on the way to the cemetery, and took videos and photographs of the body.

“Four detainee deaths in nine days is a crime, not a coincidence,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The government tells families of detainees nothing about their whereabouts or well-being while they are alive or about the circumstances of their deaths.”

Fakhrawi, 49, had been detained since April 3, after he went to the Exhibition Centre police station to complain about a predawn police raid on the house of a relative, one of two nephews who were being sought by the police. The photos of Fakhrawi’s body show a red area on each of his upper arms to his shoulders, similarly discolored areas on his legs, and what appears to be blood on the right side of his neck. Human Rights Watch did not see the body. The Bahrain News Agency, in a Tweet, said an official at the military’s Bahrain Defense Force Hospital “confirmed the death of Kareem Fakhrawi was from kidney failure.” …more