Britain’s close Gulf ally Bahrain has been torturing detainees during interrogation, a leading human rights watchdog says, undermining UK government claims that the island state has reformed its security forces and improved accountability.
A report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) reveals the same sort of abuses by Bahraini personnel that were documented by an official commission of inquiry set up after popular protests against the Sunni-dominated government in 2011.
Accounts of the mistreatment of prisoners will bolster claims by Bahraini opposition figures that Britain is turning a blind eye to unacceptable practices, three weeks after the foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, inaugurated acontroversial new British naval base near the capital, Manama.
HRW interviewed 10 detainees who said they had experienced coercive interrogations at the interior ministry’s criminal investigations directorate (CID) and in police stations since 2012, and four former inmates of Jaw prison, who said they had been tortured as recently as March.
Mohamed Bader, who was arrested on his return from Syria in 2014, told HRW he was punched, kicked, stripped naked and blindfolded and handcuffed throughout his questioning. He signed a confession under torture.
Others described being subjected to electric shocks; suspension in painful positions, including by their wrists; forced standing; extreme cold and sexual abuse. Six said CID interrogators boasted of their reputation for inflicting pain on detainees.
Interviews were conducted by telephone and Skype because researchers were not granted visas to visit the country.
Activists say Hammond cancelled a planned meeting with opposition figures before meeting his Bahraini counterpart. Criticism has also mounted over the case of Sheikh Ali Salman, the leader of al-Wefaq, the country’s predominantly Shia opposition movement, who was sentenced to four years in prison in June and has been adopted by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience.
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