25 January 2009
The Bahrain Center for Human Rights expresses its deep concern regarding the health and life of the young Maythem Bader Jassim Al-Sheikh (33 years), the activist in the Unemployed and Low-waged Committee, due to him being infected with Multiple Sclerosis disease. He is believed to be infected with this disease as a result of the torture he was exposed to after his arrest from his house at dawn on 21 December 2007.
25 January 2009
The Bahrain Center for Human Rights expresses its deep concern regarding the health and life of the young Maythem Bader Jassim Al-Sheikh (33 years), the activist in the Unemployed and Low-waged Committee, due to him being infected with Multiple Sclerosis disease. He is believed to be infected with this disease as a result of the torture he was exposed to after his arrest from his house at dawn on 21 December 2007.
The information that the Center received indicates that the symptoms of this disease are beginning to appear on Maythem Al-Sheikh just weeks after his arrest and torture he was exposed to on the hands of members of the Criminal Investigation Office. Since last August, Maythem Al-Sheikh tried to communicate his sufferings from the disease to the prisons administration, but his attempts failed due to the ignorance and doggedness of this department, until the Bahrain Society for Human Rights appealed to the Public Prosecution to present him to a specialist to diagnose his condition. Last November, after three months of his request, he was presented and for the first time to a nerves specialist to diagnose his condition. However, despite the proof of being infected with the above mentioned disease, he was only transported to the hospital to receive treatment on Wednesday, 12 January 2009.
Maythem Bader Al-Sheikh was sentenced to 5 years of prison in a case known locally as the incidents of December 2007, and which took place after the death of a young man in his 30’s, a Jidhafs resident, during the protests on the Victims of Torture Day. The procedures of the arrest, investigation and trial raised suspicions in regards to failing to observe international standards for the procedures and fair trial. The International Frontline organization, in February 2008, considered Maythem and several of his companions, among them well-known activists, that they were arrested because of their peaceful activities in the human rights field. While the Human Rights Watch organization demanded, in July 2008, to immobilize the execution of the sentences and to carry out a thorough investigation in the allegations of the detainees being exposed to mistreatment and torture during their detention, the Bahrain authorities did not respond, until the time of writing this statements, to any of the investigation demands in the torture allegations at the detention center, especially in the first period that followed the arrest in the Criminal Investigation Office.
According to what the detainee Maythem Bader Al-Sheikh said to his visitors, members of the BCHR, when they visited him in the military hospital last Friday, that he was exposed to severe torture when he was arrested and for 45 continuous days in a building specified for torture called the (Detect) building, and is located in the Criminal Investigations Complex in Adliya area. This was in order to extract sayings and to force him to say confessions to acts he did not commit. Maythem was exposed to all sorts of torture, which included suspension by the hands all night, electric shock in various parts of the body and especially the sensitive areas, harassment and attempt of sexual assault, inserting a wooden rod by force in his rear part. The most he suffered from was the torture that took place on New Year’s night of 2008, when a group of torturers continuously tortured him until the morning hours of that day. The torture effects were visible when his family members were permitted a visit after the end of the interrogation period. Among the names that participated in the interrogation and torture, according to his sayings are:
Captain Fahad Al-Fadhala (Bahraini)
Lance Corporal Duaij Al-Kubaisi (Bahraini)
Corporal Hamza Al-Shomaley (Bahraini)
First Lieutenant Isa Al-Majali (Jordanian)
First police officer Abdul-Malik (Yemeni)
The medical report that was presented to the Court in the case, in which Maythem was accused, indicates the possibility that incidents of torture did happen to the detainees that Maythem was among. However, the Court reckoned neither the report nor the witnesses’ statements. It was, on the contrary, remarkable that the sentence did not consider the detention period which is nearly a year, nor the holidays that are suppose to be deducted from the sentence, as is usual and as is known.
Members of the ruling family head the Ministry of the Interior, the National Security Service, the Ministry of Justice, the Supreme Council, and the judges of the Higher Criminal Court, which Maythem and his fellows were sentenced in, and which strengthens the doubts in the independency and integrity of the sentence issued by the Court. Several BCHR reports stated the escalating rate of systematic torture in all security issues and arrests related to it, since December 2007 and until this moment. It is believed that there is a relation between the mounting public protests and the general resentment against the authority’s policies in the various issues, among them the arbitrary arrest and torture.
Based on the above, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) demands the authorities in Bahrain the following:
1. To immediately release the prisoner Maythem Bader Al-Sheikh, and all the other detainees who are believed to be arrested because of their peaceful demanding activities.
2. To urgently send Maythem Al-Sheikh to receive treatment outside Bahrain, since Bahrain lacks specialized centers, whether for the serious organic disease that he suffers from or from the psychological torture effects.
3. To open an urgent, independent and transparent investigation in the torture incidents that took place against the detainees, and especially Maythem Al-Sheikh, and to suspend the accused from work, to prepare for their presentation to a fair trial before a non-biased and just court.
4. To carry out a specialized medical examination to the rest of the detainees in the security issues which started in what was known as December 2007 incidents, and what followed that, and to reveal what the exposure to torture caused them during the investigation and detention period.