Bahrain: International outrage as two ten years old children jailed for six months – Bahrain Freedom Movement

In one of the most outrageous miscarriages of justice in the world, a Bahraini court imposed a jail sentence on two children for their pro-democracy activities. On 30th December the court sentenced Mohammad Ali, 10 yearare said to be the youngest political prisoners in the world and their continued detention has led o an outcry among local human rights activists.

The court also imposed a sentence of ten years imprisonment on three Bahrainis: Fadhel Abbas, his borhter, Mohammad and Sayyed Ali Omran. They were also fined 4000 Bahraini Dinars (11,000 US dollars). Three other detainees in the same case, Jaffar Abdul Hamid,  Fadhel Hubail and Abbas Ramadhan, had to wait for their sentence until 16th January. They were sentenced on the basis of confessions extracted under torture for allegedly taking part in anti-regime activities. The whole trial took less than one hour to issue the verdict and sentence. It is clear that the sentences came from high authorities who control the judiciary from the royal court. Despite pleas to allow the two brothers to see their seriously ill mother, Al Zayed refused the request. The father of the two brothers two weeks before their arrest.

The judge, Ibrahim Al Zayed, is the main official who presides over the courts sentencing the pro-democracy activists and has, himself, approved the practice of torture and refused to investigate any allegation of ill-treatment. With his two aides, Ali Al Dhahrani and Haitham Al Musaifer, they have become the judicial mouthpiece of the ruling family and have relied on their verdicts on “confessions” extracted under torture. Lord Avebury hinted that they may be implicated in those crimes for acting on those confessions.

Ibrahim Al Zayed is now ranked alongside Khalifa bin Abdulla Al Khalifa who has ordered his men to intensify the torture inflicted on Bahrainis. The latest twist is the use of rape of inmates to blackmail them into spying on fellow Bahrainis. Nabil Rajab, the President of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights has reported at least one such case. A child had been raped and the image of this crime was used to force him into accepting to work with the torturers to spy on others.

Meanwhile more Bahrainis have been arrested and dumped in the underground cellars of the notorious National Security Agency (NSA) run by Khalifa bin Abdulla Al Khalifa, the former Ambassador to UK. Imad Ali Al Uraibi, 27, from the town of Musalla was arrested on Thursday 30th December.

The regime’s militias, riot police and Death Squads are continuing their iron-fist tactics with round-the-clock presence in hotspots. In Nuwaidrat, Sitra, Zinj and Al Adliya the activist youth were pursued relentlessly in the past few days ad they continued to write on walls and burn tyres in the streets. On 30th December they raided homes in Daih and Sanabis also. Mouse-and-cats games are continuing in several areas at the public anger mounts at what the Bahrainis perceive as an all-out attacks by the ruling junta on the native Bahrainis. The industrial areas in Sitra were the scene of frantic activities by the pro-regime’s militias especially near the roundabout separating the villages of Wadyan and Mhazza and inside Ql Giryah and Al Kharijiyah in Sitra where checkpoints were established. A family from the town of Daih has lodged an official complaint against those militias as they have wreaked havoc in the area. The family said that these militias would come in the early hours of the morning, ring the bell and stay outside their door, intimidate their children and create an atmosphere of fear for no real reason. The family’s complaint is unlikely to be heeded.

On another level, the political prisoners in the web allegedly involved in sedition and plots against the Al Khalifa, have continued to insist on re-instating their original team of lawyers who had demanded investigation of torture and called for re-investigation of the defendants under the jurisdiction of the court. They have now been subjected to more torture and abuse to force them to accept the new team of lawyers. In their recent family visits they have complained of beatings, deprivation of sleep, denial of religious books, the use of one syringe to extract blood from all of them and electric shocks. This outrageous behaviour is being witnessed by officials from Western embassies in Manama who have not moved one finger in protest.

Bahrain Freedom Movement
1st January 2011