Interview with Matar Ibrahim Matar, Activist and ex-Member of the Bahrain’s Parliament

An interview with Matar Ibrahim Matar: A Political Activist and ex-Member of the Bahraini Parliament
أصوات بارزة – 11/02/2011 – ASWAT

Matar Ibrahim Matar is an ex-member of the Bahraini Parliament. He is a leading figure in the Wefaq Society, the largest political party representing the Shia majority in Bahrain. The Wefaq Society plays a big role in the current opposition movement, and in the 2010 elections they increased their representation by one seat, winning all the constituencies they contested, to take 18 out of 40 parliamentary seats. Matar was imprisoned for over a month and is currently facing charges for his support of the uprising. We reached him at his home in Bahrain by phone to ask him a few questions about his experiences in the past years.

1) Explain who you are, your involvement with the Bahraini government and your current role in political affairs.

My name is Matar Ibrahim Matar; I have an M.A in computer science from Kuwait University where I specialized in artificial intelligence. After university, I came back to Bahrain and developed the youth arm of the Wefaq Society: the largest Shi’a party in Bahrain. Some may refer to our society as a political party, but because Bahrain does not have a true democracy it acts more like a society. As I moved up professionally within the system, members elected me to the Shura al Wefaq, a legislative council which monitors al-Wefaq’s executive council. Later, I was chosen to represent the largest constituency in the Bahraini parliament and was elected with 85% of the vote. In parliament, I was placed on the Committee of Economic and Financial Affairs, which reviews budgets of various ministries and state organizations. On many occasions, some of the ministries, such as the Ministry of Defense or the National Guard, refused to submit their budgets. Also, other individuals from the government refused to attend their committee hearings. Unfortunately, their refusal to cooperate with our committee was not met with any penalties. This is one example of the undemocratic nature of the Bahraini government; Bahrain has had declining transparency, competence, and a worsening human rights record in the last ten years.

2) What happened to you? Why and how did they arrest you? What happened during and after your detention?

The political authorities were always preparing cases against me in an attempt to provide a legitimate reason to arrest me. The first attempt came from the television confession of Ali Sager who was tortured and was forced to give a false confession. On TV, he confessed that I had ordered him to run over security personnel and kill them with a car. This accusation meant that I could face the death penalty, if tried and convicted in court. Ali’s recent death in prison as a result of torture, however, reveals that the authorities must have coerced him into providing false confessions and accusations.

The second case fabricated by the government involved eleven detainees who were tortured until they confessed, falsely, that I had funded a program to create a media center that, according to the government, disseminated false information about the state. When I confronted the police and asked the security forces to show me one recording of a conversation I had with these detainees, they were unable to provide me with any proof.

The third and final case involved a woman calling me asking to meet her somewhere. When I told my wife she felt very uncomfortable with it and she accompanied me. When I arrived at the location, my wife came out of the car and met the woman. At the same time masked and armed civilians came and arrested me. They tried to accuse me of committing adultery but because my wife was with me, they could not justify such a claim. They arrested me anyway.

* What about your time in prison?

Only masked men interacted with me in prison so I never knew the identity of the guards (with the exception of two guards, who showed me their faces after a while). They first questioned me for two days and then sent me to the Bahraini national intelligence agency’s jail. I was placed in solitary confinement for 45 days in a very small room with no windows; the lighting never changed. I could not recognize the time or day, only the calls to prayer gave me some idea. Whenever I left the room, they covered my eyes. I was tortured, physically and psychologically. I was completely isolated for three weeks. They tortured me physically when they questioned me. They would even torture me after the questioning just to demonstrate their dominance. They saw it as a punishment for my actions. They made me stand up until I felt like fainting and they refused to help me when I was weak. They told me if I were to stop standing, they would move me outside and have me stand in the sun. The psychological torture was worse. I would hear the screams of others being tortured around me all the time. I began to imagine the horrible things that were happening to them. I could never sleep because whenever I heard noises outside my door, I would think that they were coming for me. …more