A joint human rights report sheds light on the methods of torture used in Bahrain’s prisons has been released. This report was released a few days later, a documentary book was published that monitored similar crimes committed against prisoners of opinion and expression in Bahrain.
The report entitled “Patterns of torture in Bahrain: perpetrators must face justice.” was drafted by Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.
It was prepared in cooperation with the Gulf Center for Human Rights, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, the International Federation for Human Rights and the World Organization Against Human Rights
The report includes direct statements of torture survivors. It is a comprehensive study on the specific ways and means by which torture is perpetrated in Bahrain.
It focuses particularly on the period since the popular movement in 2011 and the violent crackdown that followed. The organizations say that the report does not only seek to describe how torture is committed in Bahrain. Rather, it goes one step further by examining the concrete steps that need to be taken at the local and international levels to end the culture of impunity that facilitates the use of torture and prevents accountability.
The report concludes that local agencies, such as the Ministry of Interior’s Ombudsman and the Special Investigations Unit failed to independently investigate allegations of torture and to ensure redress and compensation for victims.
The report examines the potential of legal avenues such as universal jurisdiction to address a long-standing culture of impunity, which allows perpetrators of torture in Bahrain to escape from punishment.
The report also reveals the extent of the international community’s complicity in facilitating the use of torture to silence dissenting voices. This includes the voices of human rights defenders, political activists, social media activists, journalists, lawyers and religious leaders.
The report also examines “the legitimacy of the ongoing military and technical support provided to Bahrain by some members of the international community.”
On the other hand, it specified a number of urgently needed international legal reforms to hold accountable members of the international community known for facilitating torture in Bahrain.
It is noteworthy that this report came days after the publication of a book entitled “Exhalations”. The book contains 68 affidavits of political detainees from inside the Jaw Central Prison.
In these statements, prisoners explain more than 28 methods of brutal torture that they were subjected to after the March 10, 2015 protests in Jaw Prison.
The prisoners recorded 63 names of what the book described as “executioners”, including officers and members of the Jordanian gendarmerie, and other mercenaries.
The book also reveals the involvement of Emirati officers in torturing detainees. It stated that these testimonies are one of the tools of resistance that the prisoners brought out as “ Exhalations ” that narrate outrage from the flood of the pain that they inflicted with patience.
Meanwhile, activists called for exposing the scandalous Bahraini regime and dispelling its fictitious narrative promoted by its media firms about an alleged improvement in the human rights situation in the Kingdom.
The activists’ call came in conjunction with a dialogue seminar to be held by the Bahrain Institute for Political Development of the Bahraini regime on March 16th on what it called the “achievements” of human rights in the Kingdom.
