Dana Mall Incidents Case: “Unauthorized Gathering”
19 citizens – among them four minors and three activists – are held in custody since five months while the Unfair trial sessions are at the beginning
Urgent: The Police use force to deal with the detainees protesting prolonged detention
August 17th 2006
Ref: 06081701
Dana Mall Incidents Case: “Unauthorized Gathering”
19 citizens – among them four minors and three activists – are held in custody since five months while the Unfair trial sessions are at the beginning
Urgent: The Police use force to deal with the detainees protesting prolonged detention
August 17th 2006
Ref: 06081701
Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR) followed the hearings of 19 accused citizens in the case that is known as the Dana Shopping Mall case, case number 7 / 2006 / 2152 / 7. Nabeel Rajab, the vice president of the (BCHR) attended the court session on August 15th. Mr. Rajab stated that he noticed a positive improvement in allowing the families of the detained to attend the session, as well as allowing a short meeting between the defendants and their families directly after the session. However, later in the day the BCHR received information that the defendants protested against continuation of their imprisonment. A special police force was allegedly brought to them and took them by force to deferent detention centers. The defendants’ families expressed to the BCHR their worry about the safety of the detained.
The first supreme criminal court, decided to postpone the hearing until the 14th of September. The court rejected for the third time a plea by the lawyer Abdulla Al-Shamlawi to release the detained on bail. The continuation of holding the defendants since March 10th raises great concern as these citizens have been held in custody for more than 5 months until now, which is looked at as a punishment that has been imposed on them before proving them guilty.
In regard to 17 of the of the 19 defendants, who were held in Dry-Dock detention Center, the lawsuit files against them lack any evidence related to them committing any type of violations, except the charge of participating in the set-in to demand the release of detainees in a previous case. The authorities documents on the case implied that the set-in was authorized in the morning but was not so in the evening and that was way they separated it by force. While the organizers say that the authorization prolonged until dusk, and that they stopped to perform the Friday prayer, and that the special security forces separated the protesters by force with no prior warning, in contradiction with the 1972 Bahraini law on assembling.
The two other defendants, Mohammed Ali Ebrahim and Essa Abd-Ali Rabe’, complain of isolation in Um-El-Hassam police station. The prosecution accuses the two of assaulting a security man in during the incidents that took place in Dana Mall after separating the protesters. These two accused demanded the judge in the last session to be transferred with the other defendants and to insure their rights as innocent until proven guilty.
In an earlier session, the court had decided to release on bail the defendent Qanea Saleh AbdAl-Nabi, 25 year old, an activist in the “Committee to Defend the Infected with Hereditary Blood Diseases”, due to the continued decadence in his health condition because of his suffering from the sickle cell disease. On the other hand, the BCHR followed with concern the public prosecution’s decision to continue the imprisonment of another activist, Ali Majeed Alawi, a member of “Families of Detainees committee, although he was acquitted of the accusation of participating in the December 2005 protest in Bahrain Airport. The prosecution included his name to the accused in the Dana Mall case and ordered to continue his custody. The third human rights activist who is detained in this case is Mousa AbdAli, 25 year old, a member of the “Unemployed Committee”. Few months befor his detention, Mousa AbdAli was abducted and subjected to sexual and physical abuse by allegedly security forces. His case is still under “investigation” by the public prosecution with no result until now, while he remains in prison with the accusation of participating in the Dana protest.
Prosecution files related to Dana mall case, as well as BCHR documentations of witness testimonies, and also the photos and films that the Centre possesses indicate the following:
- The set-in was organized by the “Families of Detainees” committee on March 10th demanding the release of the detained. It was peaceful and a large number of women and children participated in it. The organizing committee notified the security panels about the protest and got its approval.
- The special security forces, with no prior warning, and almost before half an hour from ending the protest used force – which includes tear gas and rubber bullets – claiming that the sit-in was authorized in the morning only.
- The protesters – who the security report estimated their number to be 150 – turned to the Dana Shopping Mall to protect themselves from the rubber bullets and the tear gas as there was no other near place.
- The mall’s management tried to prevent the special security forces from entering the mall. But it anyway entered the mall and shops and used tear gas and pursued the ones it suspects are participants in the protest.
- The defendants were randomly arrested inside Dana Mall, none of them were arrested red-handed in the acts of violence that took place outside the shopping mall after breaking up the protest by force.
- The prosecution presented photos of few protester assaulting a security man who entered to pursue the protesters in the second floor of the mall, claiming that two of the defendants were among the assaulters. Apart from these two defendants, there were no evidences whatsoever that connect the defendants to the alleged injuries of security men and damages upon some of the cars in the area surrounding the mall.
- The police, press and the prosecution had used photographs that show the assault of a police, while many other photos from the same source are kept hidden because they show the nonviolence of the set-in and the brutal assault which the special security forces carried out against the citizens inside the shopping mall, and which caused the injury and suffocation of tens of people among them women and children.
- The owner of the shopping center in where the assaults and arrests took place testified that the confrontation started only after the entrance of the special security forces to the mall, and that they confiscated the video tapes that belong to the shops. When the lawyers requested in court session to include those tapes to the case files, the prosecutor denied its existence. This might indicate the intention to hid an important proof in the case, and to cover up the use of excessive force by the special security forces during the pursuing and arrest.
The Bahrain Center for Human Rights demands the instant release of the detained, and especially those that there is no proof against them of using violence, among them three human rights activists. If there is anything that requires convicting those of the offense of participating in an unauthorized assembling, then that does not prevent releasing them while proceeding with the trial.
The BCHR demands especially the release of four of the defendants who are under the age of 18 and who are school students, adhering to the standards of human rights and the international convention on the rights of the childe which Bahrain is a state member of and should complies with.