{"id":6211,"date":"2012-02-22T10:25:46","date_gmt":"2012-02-22T17:25:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=6211"},"modified":"2012-02-22T14:57:04","modified_gmt":"2012-02-22T21:57:04","slug":"department-of-state-knew-timoney-was-a-pig-when-they-recommend-him-to-king-hamad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=6211","title":{"rendered":"Department of State knew Timoney was a “complement to tyranny” when they recommend him to King Hamad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Police Chief Timoney, Meet Bahraini Mothers<\/strong>
\nby Medea Benjamin – 21 February, 2012 – Common Dreams<\/p>\n

John Timoney is the controversial former Miami police chief well known for orchestrating brutal crackdowns on protests in Miami and Philadelphia- instances with rampant police abuse, violence, and blatant disregard for freedom of expression. It should be of great concern that the Kingdom of Bahrain has brought Timoney and John Yates, former assistant commissioner of Britain’s Metropolitan Police, to \u201creform\u201d Bahrain\u2019s security forces. [A Bahraini anti-government protester argues with riot policemen. (AP)] A Bahraini anti-government protester argues with riot policemen. (AP)<\/p>\n

Since assuming his new position, Timoney has claimed that Bahrain has been reforming it brutal police tactics in response to recommendations issued by the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry. He says that there is less tear gas being used and that while tear gas might be \u201cdistasteful,\u201d it\u2019s not really harmful.<\/p>\n

I have no idea what country Chief Timoney is talking about, because it\u2019s certainly not the Bahrain I saw this past week, a week that marked the one-year anniversary since the February 14, 2011 uprising.<\/p>\n

I was in Bahrain for five days before being deported for joining a peaceful women\u2019s march. During my stay, I accompanied local human rights activists to the villages where protests were raging and police cracking down. Every day, I inhaled a potent dose of tear gas, and came close to being hit in the head with tear gas canisters. Every evening I saw the fireworks and smelled the noxious fumes as hundreds of tear gas canisters were lobbed into the village of Bani Jamrah, next door to where I was staying. The villagers would get on their roofs yelling \u201cDown, Down Hamad\u201d (referring to the King). In exchange, as a form of collective punishment, the whole village would be doused in tear gas. I went to bed coughing, eyes burning, wondering how in the world the Bahrainis can stand this.<\/p>\n

Tear gas is supposed to be used to disperse violent gatherings that pose a threat to law and order. It is not supposed to be used on unarmed protesters who are simply exercising their freedoms of expression and assembly.<\/p>\n

\u201cShamefully, Bahrain has the highest tear gas use, per capita, in the world,\u201d said human rights activist Nabeel Rajab. \u201cAnd the police don\u2019t just shoot outside to disperse crowds. They use the tear gas canisters as weapons, shooting them directly at people. And they shoot the gas right into people\u2019s houses. If Mr. Timoney thinks the use of tear gas here is \u2018moderate,\u2019 he has obviously not spent many evenings in Bahraini villages.”<\/p>\n

Timoney also told reporters that there is no evidence that tear gas has killed anyone. He should meet Zahra Ali, the mother of Yassin Jassim Al Asfoor.<\/p>\n

On November 19, 2011, riot police\u2014running around the village of Ma’ameer searching for a few people chanting anti-government slogans\u2014fired three tear gas canisters directly into her home.
\n
\nEveryone in the family started choking, especially 13-year-old Yassin, who suffered from asthma. Yassin could barely breathe. Panicking, his parents called an ambulance. \u201cI\u2019m dying from the tear gas, I\u2019m dying,\u201d Yassin cried on the way to the hospital. He struggled desperately to survive for the next 29 days before his lungs simply collapsed.<\/p>\n

Zahra lovingly showed me photos of Yassin donning a party hat, celebrating his 14th birthday in the hospital a few days before he died. \u201cAll the doctors and nurses loved him\u2014Sunni, Shia, everyone. They even came here for his funeral,\u201d she said proudly.<\/p>\n

I asked Zafra if she had a message about the tear gas for Police Chief Timoney. \u201cJust ask him if he has ever lost a child,\u201d she whispered.<\/p>\n

Timoney should also meet the parents of 14-year-old Ali Jawad al-Sheik. He did not die from inhalation. No. He was killed on August 31, 2011, when the police fired tear gas at protesters from roughly 20 feet away. A canister busted open the young boy\u2019s face. To his parent\u2019s furor, the autopsy said the cause of death was \u201cunknown.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same thing happened exactly four months later to 15-year-old Sayyed Hashem Saeed. The police then used tear gas to disperse mourners at Sayyed\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n

Faisal Abdali, a businessman who lives at the entrance of Sitra, would also love to speak to the police chief. He is hopping mad and wants some justice and accountability.<\/p>\n

For months now, as the police enter the village of Sitra, they have been tossing tear gas directly into his house. Every time he lodged a complaint, the house would be targeted even worse the next day.<\/p>\n

Faisal had taped up all the windows and sealed the air conditioners to keep the gasses out. On January 27, 2012 the police shot tear gas inside the garage. When Faisal\u2019s wife opened the garage door, the gasses filled the house. Everyone felt sick, especially Faisal\u2019s father\u2014a healthy 58-year-old. He started vomiting, and went to bed early in the hopes that he would feel better the next day. When Faisal opened his father\u2019s bedroom door the next morning, he found him lying on the floor. Five days later, he was dead. The doctor said he died from tear gas but he was not allowed to put that on his death certificate.<\/p>\n

Faisal showed me about ten of the canisters that had been thrown into his house. Three of them came from Combined Systems in Jamestown, Pennsylvania and three from factories in Brazil. The rest had no markings at all. Faisal thought that the unmarked ones were the most toxic.<\/p>\n

A Bahraini doctor told Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) about the different types of gas she found in the villages. \u201c[There was] a white gas and a yellow one, but I also saw a third gas of a blue color from a distance. The gas felt like a poison, like a thousand knives and needles all over your body; what kind of tear gas is supposed to affect people this way? I have seen tear gas patients who are in a state of convulsion that never ends, like a prolonged seizure.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other Bahraini doctors have noted that the symptoms of the tear gas are unusual. When they asked the Ministry of Health to run tests on the gas canisters, their requests were denied.<\/p>\n

Since the long-term effects of prolonged and repeated exposure to tear gas has never been studied, physicians and environmentalists in Bahrain have begun to worry about the impact that repeated exposure to these chemicals may have on the general population. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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Police Chief Timoney, Meet Bahraini Mothers by Medea Benjamin – 21 February, 2012 – Common Dreams John Timoney is the controversial former Miami police chief well known for orchestrating brutal crackdowns on protests in Miami and Philadelphia- instances with rampant police abuse, violence, and blatant disregard for freedom of expression. It should be of great more \u00bb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[582],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6211"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6211"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6230,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6211\/revisions\/6230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}