Among al Khalifa’s victims from today’s protests are the new detainees who will experience Faisal Hayyat’s story

Faisal Hayyat -Jail Tale, I’m dying
Bahrain Mirror

My First Daytime
The night was slow in the detention chamber. Sleep was elusive amid the detainees’ screams who were being tortured in the adjacent chambers. On Friday morning, a policeman brought me a sheet titled “Medical Check Form”, and two charges were written on it: crowding and incitement of hatred against the regime. The latter charge struck me with immense horror. “Incitement? I’m an instigator?” I refused to sign. One of the officials ordered me to comply fully to the policemen’s orders and not to refuse anything, and amid assurances of the detainees young men who were with me in the same detention chamber, I signed the form. The detainees told me that it was a mere form to allow for the medical check. I was blindfolded all the time, and still suffered severe pains in my hands and my feet soles after the night beatings. I was unable to move them neither lifting them off the floor.

At the noon prayers time, I asked a policeman to point me to Mecca direction. He pointed me to the opposite direction. It was an issue I knew after a new detainee had been brought to the detention chamber. I prayed hastily and in fear. In minutes, some one came calling for me. I was dragged handcuffed and blindfolded to the torture chamber. As soon as I entered, four to five people jumped on me beating me severely. I was able to determine their number of their voices. They hit me with whatever they had: hoses, electrical cables, punches on various parts of my body and boots kicks. Everyone was hitting me at the same time. There was no breath between the hit and the following one, they were combined hits that you felt that you had no room to breathe. Everyone swore, cursed, insulted and dishonoured my religious belief.

Who gets out?
I was screaming strongly for the severe beating. I begged them to stop beating me: “I’m dying, please, I can’t bear more”. Their reply was ready: “You’ll die here, don’t rush your fate”. They ordered me to say the slogan written on the placard that I had held in the journalists’ rally. I said: “Free, Free Press” and I stopped. They even beat me more, and said: “Go on, what was after Free, Free Press?”, I did not reply. They beat me even more. I screamed confessing: “… get out”. I pronounced the senior official’s name whose name I would not disclose now. Their beatings even grew more brutal and said to me: “Now you’ll know who gets out”.

I did not know for how much time I was in the torture chamber. They sent me back to the detention chamber. I threw my collapsing body, not believing what was going on to me, feeling that I was in a dark tunnel without any glimmer of light. They brought the lunch meal. I was unable to eat anything as I was in panic and horror of my ordeal and of what I heard of the detainees’ screams in the adjacent chambr.

After half an hour they called me again. I was completely collapsed, my feet were unable to carry my body neither was my body able to make my feet move. One of the policemen dragged me to the same chamber. It was the same chamber, I knew it of the distance of the way, from the number of steps, that way I sensed my arrival to it, and said to myself: “My God, back to you once again!!”.

As soon as I stepped in, they assaulted me: punching, then beating by hoses, then by fists, then kicks. The executioners were careful not to harm my face, as it was the most prominent part and more scandalous. I got strong slaps on the face by their hands, no fists, but a stray punch hit my nose and caused me severe bleeding that forced them to stop and send me to the detention chamber.

Sexual Harassment
On my way to the detention chamber, across corridors among chambers, I was subjected to explicit sexual harassment by a policeman. He lowered my pants and expressed his unrestrained desire to assault me sexually (!!!) I was about to faint and fall headlong after hearing what he had said. I entered into a fit of hysteric crying and pleaded him: “I’m a father and have children, please, don’t do that to me, torture me as you wish, but I plead to you with the most precious things you have not to do that”. That took place when we passed by the detention chamber. I knew later that we had been in the Police Station courtyard at the entrance. The event was meant to humiliate me deliberately in front of those who were present for taking revenge watching me as a humiliated detainee without dignity, there was no respect to my humanity that was violated among the policemen’s laughter. After that the one with the same voice pulled up my pants and made me face the wall, then he started with the others to grope my body parts and was keen to press the front part of his body to the back side of my body. …much more