Bahrain Crackdown: Six Teens Held in Detention, HRW Warns

By Staff, Agencies

The Bahraini regime has been holding six boys in detention for several weeks, the rights group Human Rights Watch said.

It said the Manama regime has presented no justification for their detention.

In a joint report with the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy [BIRD], HRW noted that the six teenagers are aged 14 to 15.

The boys, from the Sitra area, are being held on the orders of the public prosecutor’s office at the Beit Batelco facility in Seef district, which a government website describes as an “institution … for children of unknown parentage, orphans and children of broken families up to the age of 15.” The children’s alleged offenses appear to have occurred in December 2020 or January 2021, when they were 13 and 14, based on the boys’ recollections of their interrogations. A statement by the Office of the Public Prosecution alleges they threw Molotov cocktails that damaged a car near a police station.

“Last year Bahrain touted its legal reforms for children, but locking up children in an orphanage instead of a jail is hardly an improvement when their detention is arbitrary in the first place,” said Bill Van Esveld, associate children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The treatment of these boys is a test of Bahrain’s respect for children’s rights, and so far the authorities are failing.”

Their family’s request for attending interrogation sessions has been rejected by the authorities, according to the report.

Rights groups slammed the ruling Al Khalifa regime for failing to respect the rights of children, adding that keeping kids in child care centers instead of prisons does not justify their arbitrary detention.

Ever since 2011, Bahraini people have been holding peaceful protest rallies on an almost daily basis, demanding that the Al Khalifa family relinquish power and let a just system representing all Bahrainis be established.

Manama has responded to the protests with lethal force, drawing international criticism. In March 2011, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were also deployed to assist Bahrain in its crackdown.