Unfair Bahrain Trial Sentences Sixteen Minors to Fifteen Years in Prison

[Bahrain Center for Human Rights logo] [Bahrain Center for Human Rights logo]

Unfair Bahrain Trial Sentences Sixteen Minors to Fifteen Years in Prison

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following statement was issued by the Bahrain Center for Human Rights on 29 March 2013.] 

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights expresses grave concern over the detention and sentencing of 16 Bahraini citizens to 15 years imprisonment without clear evidence of the charges brought against them. The authorities in Bahrain have been arbitrarily arresting, detaining and sentencing citizens from protest areas in sham trials.

The Ministry of Interior claims that in July 2012 a police patrol was attacked in an attempt to kill policemen. A MOI vehicle was burned and no causalities or injuries were announced by the ministry. The event was followed by an arrest campaign in a nearby village and many were taken into custody.

On 21 March 2013, the higher criminal court sentenced 16, some of them minors, to 15 years` imprisonment and BD10,508 fine after charging them with attempted murder of policemen while on duty, arson of a vehicle owned by the MOI, illegal gathering and possession of Molotov cocktails.

The BCHR documentation and monitoring team met with some of the families of the 16 sentenced to document their cases:

Ahmed Yousif is only 16 years old. He was arrested after his house was raided early morning on 15 July 2012. Ahmed was reportedly beaten and tortured during arrest and interrogation in roundabout 17 - Hamad Town police station.

Hussain Mohammed, 17 years old, was kidnapped by a civilian car on 10 July 2012 when he was with his friend in their neighborhood. His family searched for him but did not hear from him until many hours later. According to his family, Hussain was tortured at the police station and in a prison visit he told them not to talk about the political situation because they record the conversations and whoever discusses such topics is then reportedly subjected to beatings and torture.

Mohammed Jaffer, 17 years old, was arrested after his house was raided by masked civilians. He was reportedly severely beaten in front of his mother, then taken to an unknown destination. The public prosecution ordered his release, however, when he was taken to roundabout 17, Hamad town police station, he was charged in this case and taken back to custody. Mohammed was transferred to Jaw prison a day before his verdict session.

Ali Hussain Al Dubaisy, 21 years old, was in hiding for some time. On 23 July 2012, after leaving his family’s house, he was stopped by 3 civilian cars and kidnapped. His family heard about his disappearance from neighbors. His father called him several times and went to the police station asking about Ali but he was told that he is not in their custody. At midnight, the family received a call from Hamad town police station. Ali was reportedly subjected to torture. He underwent a surgical operation in his legs which wasn’t successful and requires another operation. The prison administration refuses to take him to the hospital for his second scheduled surgery.

Mohammed Ali Abdulhussain, 19 years old, was arrested by civilian cars on 10 July 2012. His family learned of his arrest from social media, went to the nearby police station to ask about their son but they denied having him. After 4 days, they were called by the police station to bring Mohammed’s identity card and clothes. He was taken to the public prosecution on the fifth day of his arrest then transferred to the dry dock prison. His house was raided several times and family members threatened.

Ali Mohammed Sultan, 20 years old, was arrested when his house was raided on 15 July 2012 by masked civilians. He was reportedly beaten and then taken to Hamad town – roundabout 17 police station. He was taken to the public prosecution after 2 days without a lawyer. His family says that they did not hear from him until their first visit when he told them that he was reportedly tortured and beaten, including hearing his brother, who was arrested previously then released, being tortured. He was then transferred to Jaw prison.

Ali Salman Laith, 21 years old, was arrested from a checkpoint in Karzakan. He was taken to criminal investigation where he was reportedly beaten and tortured.

Hasan Salman Laith, 29 years old, was arrested while leaving his in-law’s house. After 3 days his family received a call from the police station. According to his family, he was taken to Hamad Town police station where he was blindfolded for 3 days until he was taken to the public prosecution. He was reportedly subjected to physical and psychological torture and threatened to be electrocuted and sexually assaulted. Hasan told his family that officer Sultan A Qatam told him “we know that you are not involved in this case but you have participated in protests. And you have to confess that you participated in the case and sign on the names of the people involved or it will be the last day of your life”.

There have been many cases of a similar nature with charges of attacking police patrols, explosions and possession of explosive materials that the MOI has been announcing since 14 Feb 2011. Most of these cases have no causalities or even injuries reported, and the majority have no witnesses amongst citizens; however, they are followed by arbitrary arrest campaigns and sentencing to years of imprisonment without providing substantial evidence, such as Al Eker case where 17 were sentenced to 15 years` imprisonment last April, as well as the case of the 3 defendants in the case of possession of 5 tons explosive material who are reportedly subjected to severe ill-treatment and torture.

The BCHR believes that the authorities arbitrary arrests, detention and sentencing of citizens in villages where protests take place is part of the suppression of the pro-democracy movement in Bahrain and their policy of collective punishment.

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights calls on the United States, the United Kingdom, the UN and all other close allies and international institutions to put pressure on the Government of Bahrain to immediately release all political prisoners and to drop all fabricated charges against them, provide all defendants with fair and independent trials according to international standards and put an end to targeting of citizens of villages for demanding democracy and human rights.

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412