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Bahrain - Breaking the Silence

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BBC World News - Bahrain - Breaking the Silence

BBC Arabic investigates allegations of torture and rape in a police station in Bahrain.

In this exclusive documentary about Bahrain, one of the least-reported countries of the Arab world, female protestors say they were tortured and raped in a police station.

This film lifts the lid on Bahrain, one of the least-reported countries of the Arab world. It features the powerful testimonies of female protestors speaking on television for the first time. Ebtisam al-Saegh and Najah Yusuf allege they were tortured and raped in a Bahraini police station. Both women have now been released.
 
The women explain why they joined the 2011 uprising – to secure better living conditions for Bahrain’s Shia majority. However, the two were not arrested until 2017, as part of a new crackdown against activists. Ebtisam spent three months in prison and Najah was sentenced to three years. In Ebtisam’s case, it was for allegedly spreading hate against the regime, while Najah had tweeted against the Formula One Grand Prix which is held every year in Bahrain. 

A third female protestor, Hajer, is featured via the recording of a phone call she made while in prison. Hajer was released on 5 March 2020. 
The film also investigates claims that Britain and the US have been complicit in the regime's alleged human rights abuses by providing training and funding to Bahrain’s security forces. The Liberal Democrat peer, Paul Scriven, who has long been campaigning in the House of Lords to expose these connections, asks why it is that over the past six years Bahrain has had about £6.5 million of UK tax payers’ money.

One senior Bahraini police chief, Brigadier Fawaz al-Hassan, who has received training from the British, was in charge of the Muharraq detention centre where Ebtisam and Najah allege they were raped. His older brother, Major-General Tariq al-Hassan, is the head of Bahrain‘s domestic security. Tariq was also part of the Bahrain delegation received by the Trump administration in Washington DC in November 2017, several months after the alleged rapes had been reported to the UN and elsewhere. 

In July 2018, at the request of the Foreign Office, Durham Constabulary launched a two-year forensics training programme for the Bahraini police. The Bahraini signatory to this contract is Major-General Tariq Al-Hassan.

For many years Prince Andrew has maintained close ties with the Bahraini monarchy. From 2015 until November 2019, Andrew was Chancellor of Huddersfield University (a position he has since relinquished). The University is currently in its second year of teaching an MSc course at Bahrain’s Royal Academy of Policing, which has been implicated in the torture of imprisoned political dissidents. 

Specially-shot footage from Bahrain reveals that street protests are continuing in 2020. The protests intensified with the approach of 14 February, the anniversary of the 2011 uprising.

Protestors are expected again to try to attract international attention by calling for the cancellation of the Bahrain Formula One Grand Prix on 22 March 2020 – a decision they previously managed to achieve after the events of 2011.  

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