Free Hasan Salman

5 August 2010

“Except for those limitations that are demonstrably necessitated by the fact of incarceration, all prisoners shall retain the human rights and fundamental freedoms set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and, where the State concerned is a party, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Optional Protocol thereto, as well as such other rights as are set out in other United Nations covenants.” - Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights received several calls from the families of the political and criminal convicts on the background that their sons are being subjected to beating and treatment that degrades their dignity inside the Central Prison of “Jaw”. The families stated that their sons have been deprived of many of their rights which they used to benefit from as inmates in that prison and without prior notice. The local newspapers, among them Al-Wasat newspaper, reported that the inmates of the Central Prison of “Jaw” went on a hunger strike on Saturday 24 July 2010, however two days after publishing the story in the local newspapers, the Ministry of Interior stated through the Director of the Department of Correction and Rehabilitation that the strike of “Jaw” prisoners was to achieve illegal demands[1], note that all their demands are only related to improving the living conditions inside the prison and refusing the treatment that degrades their dignity, which the prisoners have long been complaining from, and which the prison officers and wardens were accused of. Among the stated demands of the prisoners were: opening the prison cells for the inmates of the same joint to communicate with each other and to provide time for the inmates to practice daily exercise and receive some needs and food from their families during the visiting hours, in addition to practicing their religious rites. All these demands were previously available in the prison; however the prison administration surprised the inmates by prohibiting them without any justifications.

The BCHR believes that the reasons behind these new restricting procedures is due to the increase in the number of political prisoners or those convicted in security incidents and confrontations witnessed by the villages and areas of Bahrain. The prison administration, and instead of dealing with the strike through dialogue and agreement and investigating the reasons and motives behind it, it ordered the members of the Special Forces to intervene and use excessive force to get them to break their strike, which led to the fall of an unknown number of wounded, this is due to the officials at the Ministry and the prison administration obscuring all details and refraining from providing any details or the numbers of wounded. The prison administration even went as far as prohibiting all visits for prisoners and blocking all means of contacting them. The BCHR was informed that the Special Forces used excessive force to punish the inmates in the Central Prison of “Jaw” several times, the last was the day before yesterday where several were faced with scattered injuries and were transmitted by small buses which lack the necessary aid kits and were taken to unknown places, while others faced severe beating and solitary confinement.

Among those in solitary confinement is the prisoner Kumail Hasan Al-Manami, and whose condition calls for being kept in the psychiatric hospital to receive necessary treatment. According to the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners[2] it states that, “Corporal punishment, punishment by placing in a dark cell, and all cruel, inhuman or degrading punishments shall be completely prohibited as punishments for disciplinary offences.” As well as, “Punishment by close confinement or reduction of diet shall never be inflicted unless the medical officer has examined the prisoner and certified in writing that he is fit to sustain it.” According to the claims of the families of convicts, the majority of assaults that took place by the Special Forces were by the orders of or alongside a group of officers. Some prisoners claim that some of the prison administrators let mobile phones through and sell them to the prisoners at high prices, and the prisoners are forced to buy them in order to contact their families, until they are confiscated by the prison guards when they are inspected only for them to be sold again to other inmates. The Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners state that, “The prison administration shall provide for the careful selection of every grade of the personnel, since it is on their integrity, humanity, professional capacity and personal suitability for the work that the proper administration of the institutions depends”. Noteworthy, the vast majority of guards working in the prison are non-Bahrainis, and are largely of Pakistani nationality and who are believed to have been incited against the prisoners accused of killing a resident from the same nationality of those guards.

The number of complaints has increased over the last months about prisoners being subjected to maltreatment in many of the interrogation centers or temporary detention, and among them the Central Prison of “Jaw”, the Criminal Investigations Building, the Temporary Detention Center known as the Dry Dock Prison, as well as some police stations where the defendants are usually held in custody until the interrogation is over. At least two deaths occurred in the last months to prisoners of the same prison, and the prison authorities at that time attributed their deaths to health conditions, however it did not initiate an independent interrogation about the deaths. It also did not grant any human right institute permission to visit the Central Prison in “Jaw” since the single visit in December, 2005. In the nineties of the last century, the Authorities, and under international pressures, authorized a delegation from the International Red Cross to visit the prisons and detention centers, and exactly in the month of April of 1996, during the period that was known as the uprising of the nineties where the Authorities were maintaining hundreds of political prisoners and detainees. The Bahraini Authorities integrate criminal inmates with the political ones, and do not separate them as required by the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, which was recommended for adoption by the First United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention.

Based on the above, the BCHR demands the Ministry of Interior the following:

1. Immediately allow the local and international human rights organizations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit the prisons and the permanent and temporary detention centers and to provide the environment for it to carry out its role, neutrally and independently;

2. Immediately investigate all the torture claims or the use of excessive force against the unarmed prisoners, and bring forth anyone found guilty to a public and transparent court of law. To adopt the recommendations of the international organizations and institutions in this regard, including the recommendations stated in report by the Human Rights Watch last February, as well as the recommendations of the UN Committee against Torture;

3. Inform the families of prisoners and detainees about the conditions of their sons and the extent of the damage that has befallen them from these injuries, as well as providing the necessary and instant treatment for them and allowing their families to meet them immediately in order to check on their safety;

4. Abide by the international standards for the treatment of prisoners, foremost the Basic Principles for the Treatment of Prisoners adopted by the United Nations in December 1990, as well as the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners recommended for adoption by the First United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention and the Treatment of Offenders, held at Geneva in 1955 and approved by the Economic and Social Council in July;

5. Immediately stop all forms of assaults and use of excessive force against the inmates of the Central Prison and to initiate a neutral investigation in the reasons behind the strike of the prisoners. To ensure that all prisoners are treated with the necessary respect for the inherent dignity and worth as humans, having the same human rights as referred to in the international conventions;

6. Permit the prisoners to practice their religious liberties inside the detention centers, among them the Central Prison of “Jaw”, and the Criminal Investigation Bureau, and to put an end to restricting them or depriving them of their religious and humane rights;

7. Improve the conditions of prisons, permanent and temporary detention centers, and the prison for women and to respect the religious beliefs and the cultural principles of the group the prisoners belong to.

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[1] Al-Wasat Newspaper

[2] Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners

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