Bahrain Mirror: In a human rights conference that discussed a study about prison conditions in the Kingdom of Bahrain, human rights activists accused Bahrain's Minister of Interior of personally supervising torture processes in Bahraini prisons.

The study prepared by Bahrain Forum for Human Rights (BFHR) and Salam for Democracy and Human Rights concluded that there is serious deterioration in human rights situation in Bahrain that poses a threat to more than 4000 political prisoners languishing behind bars.

President of BFHR Baqer Darwish said on Friday in Beirut that the Bahraini authorities go too far in their policies that violate human rights, due to the financial support it receives from its allies.

Baqer Darwish accused Bahrain's Minister of Interior of personally supervising torture processes in Bahraini prisons.

Since 2011, the total number of arbitrary arrests has reached more than 12,000 including 330 women, 968 cases of children including 3 female children, where more than 4000 citizens were subject to torture or abuse and ill-treatment.

The study revealed that 400 citizens were revoked of their citizenships and that political prisoner were tortured in 21 ways.

The study pointed out to a report issued by the Institute for Criminal Policy Research that has put the Kingdom of Bahrain in the first rank on the level of the Middle East in terms of the number of prisoners per capita, with 301 prisoners per 100,000 of national population.

BFHR and Salam said in their study that "Bahrain is experiencing a serious deterioration in the human rights situation, especially after the closure of democratic space and use of security grip in dealing with peaceful protests."

The two organizations called to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to visit Bahraini prisons and allow UN Special Rapporteurs to visit Bahrain.

The organizations called on the Bahraini authorities to admit that there are political prisoners in Bahrain, work on abolishing articles of the Penal Code and Terrorism Act that criminalize freedom of expression and to annul articles of Nationality law that are used to penalize opposition.

Arabic Version