{"id":7959,"date":"2012-03-28T14:53:40","date_gmt":"2012-03-28T21:53:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=7959"},"modified":"2012-03-28T14:53:40","modified_gmt":"2012-03-28T21:53:40","slug":"bahrain-hundreds-still-in-prison-for-speaking-out-senior-officers-unpunished","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/?p=7959","title":{"rendered":"Bahrain: Hundreds Still in Prison for Speaking Out; Senior Officers Unpunished"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bahrain: Vital Reform Commitments Unmet<\/strong>
\n28 March, 2012 – Human Rigths Watch<\/p>\n

Bahrain has taken some positive steps, but the Bahraini authorities can hardly claim that the BICI\u2019s recommendations have been implemented as long as hundreds of people remain behind bars solely for speaking out and demanding a change of government. And it seems that no high-ranking officials have been investigated for their roles in rampant torture or unlawful killings.
\nJoe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch<\/p>\n

(Beirut) \u2013 Bahrain\u2019s government has not carried out critical recommendations by the independent commission that looked into extensive human rights violations during the crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 2011, Human Rights Watch said today.<\/p>\n

The Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI), established by King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa and headed by the Egyptian-American jurist Cherif Bassiouni, issued its findings in November 2011. The king promised at the time to carry out all of its recommendations and established a National Commission to monitor the process. That body reported on March 20, 2012, that the implementation of the BICI\u2019s recommendations had been \u201ccomprehensive and far reaching\u201d and \u201ctouched all aspects of Bahraini life.\u201d But some of the BICI\u2019s most serious concerns, like accountability for crimes such as torture and relief for people wrongly imprisoned, were not adequately addressed, Human Rights Watch said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBahrain has taken some positive steps, but the Bahraini authorities can hardly claim that the BICI\u2019s recommendations have been implemented as long as hundreds of people remain behind bars solely for speaking out and demanding a change of government,\u201d said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. \u201cAnd it seems that no high-ranking officials have been investigated for their roles in rampant torture or unlawful killings.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one positive step recommended by the BICI, the government stripped the National Security Agency (NSA) of authority to arrest and detain people. The king replaced Shaikh Khalifa bin Abdullah Al Khalifa as head of the agency, but then in a disturbing move promoted him to secretary general of the Supreme Defense Council and a national security adviser to the king with ministerial rank.<\/p>\n

The BICI report found that the NSA played a major role in the arrests of 2,929 people during the 10-week state of emergency, from mid-March until early June last year, typically in nighttime raids on homes.Its report said that NSA and other security forces \u201cintentionally broke down doors, forcibly entered and sometimes ransacked the houses,\u201d used \u201csectarian insults and verbal abuses,\u201d and humiliated relatives and terrified children of those targeted. It said that the pattern of the arrests showed the \u201cexistence of an operational plan\u201d that was \u201cdesigned to inspire terror\u201d among those targeted for arrest. …more<\/a><\/p>\n

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Bahrain: Vital Reform Commitments Unmet 28 March, 2012 – Human Rigths Watch Bahrain has taken some positive steps, but the Bahraini authorities can hardly claim that the BICI\u2019s recommendations have been implemented as long as hundreds of people remain behind bars solely for speaking out and demanding a change of government. And it seems that 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":[1563],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7959"}],"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=7959"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7959\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7960,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7959\/revisions\/7960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crookedbough.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}