Whole world watching King Hamad’s brutal reign – Bahrain failing to restore country’s reputation with same old misdirect and appease techniques

King of Bahrain failing to restore country’s reputation after uprising
By Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent
5:13PM BST 18 Jul 2011

The government’s National Dialogue, its forum for negotiation with opposition groups, lay in tatters yesterday after al-Wefaq, the biggest party in parliament, announced it intended to pull out.

Meanwhile, two of the most prominent figures detained in the crackdown have described to The Daily Telegraph a routine of beatings they suffered while in captivity.

One, Ayat al-Qurmezi, a 20-year-old trainee teacher jailed for a year for reciting poems critical of the king, said she was telephoned on Saturday by police to warn her against repeating her claims.

The other, a senior surgeon at the main Salmaniya Hospital, who has asked not to be identified, said the behaviour of the authorities had alienated the non-political middle classes like himself. He was one of 48 doctors put on trial in the wake of the protests, 20 of whom remain in custody.

He said he was hit round the head, kicked and beaten with a rubber hose until he was forced to confess to inflicting the wounds suffered by protesters he was treating for their injuries, or making them worse. …more