FAMILIES of inmates at Bahrain’s central prison protested in Naim village yesterday demanding access to their relatives who launched a hunger strike six days ago.
They claim Jaw Prison cancelled their visits and won’t allow them to speak to their relatives.
Inmates are understood to be demanding personal items such as razors, extended exercise time and cell doors to be left open until midnight.
However, the Interior Ministry earlier branded the demands “illegal”.
FAMILIES of inmates at Bahrain’s central prison protested in Naim village yesterday demanding access to their relatives who launched a hunger strike six days ago.
They claim Jaw Prison cancelled their visits and won’t allow them to speak to their relatives.
Inmates are understood to be demanding personal items such as razors, extended exercise time and cell doors to be left open until midnight.
However, the Interior Ministry earlier branded the demands “illegal”.
The Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights president Mohammed Al Maskati said yesterday he had received credible information that inmates were still on hunger strike, despite police efforts to stop them.
Protester Ebtihal Salman from Naim said she last visited her brother Hassan at Jaw Prison on July 22, but had not heard from him since.
“We visit him twice a month and usually he calls us for five minutes three days a week,” she told the GDN.
“He was supposed to call on Monday but we didn’t hear from him because of the strike which started on Sunday.
“We haven’t got any good information since then apart from what we read in the newspaper and you can’t imagine how worried we all are, especially my parents because they don’t know anything about him.
“We are very worried that he has been beaten or mistreated.”
Last September, Hassan, aged 26, was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for allegedly leaking information over the Internet and the case is now in the appeals court.
Ms Salman said the family desperately hoped to hear some news of him and had spoken to human rights activists about his situation.
“My parents have been in a bad situation because he is in prison and now it is worse because we don’t know anything, they say no news is good news, but in this case it is very bad,” she said.
“His wife is also very worried about him and she is in a bad condition.”
Protester Ali Hussain Al Manami from Ma’ameer village also claims his family has been unable to visit or contact his brother Kumail and his three cousins Jassim Isa, Mohammed Isa and Sadiq Jaffer who are inmates at Jaw Prison.
“We tried to reach him many times and we were supposed to see him on Wednesday but they said the visit was cancelled because of a problem with the visitors’ room, but then we went there later and they said the visits were cancelled because there was a problem inside,” he said.
“They have lots of problems, they started not giving them their facilities, like letting them have one or two items from the prison supermarket.”
The four inmates, who have been in prison for about 18 months, are among seven who were sentenced to life imprisonment for killing Pakistani Shaikh Mohammed Riaz in March last year in a Molotov cocktail attack on his car.
Mr Al Manami said the case was now in the appeal process and was hoping His Majesty King Hamad would pardon them. “We visited Kumail two weeks ago and he was okay but he said they had put him in solitary confinement for seven days and then in a small room with four people,” he said.
“I’m worried he is being beaten, some say they are beating all people in jail, they take them one by one without negotiation.”
Interior Ministry officials were not available for comment.
The GDN had reported that Bahraini human rights groups demanded access to the prison.
They claimed prison visits had been cancelled as a result of the protest and accused guards of using heavy-handed tactics to bring inmates under control on Monday.
However, the ministry earlier said police had no choice but to use force to prevent a riot.
It also warned legal action against unruly inmates, saying the prison provided a daily programme from 3.15am to 8.45pm, which included prayer times, meals, television, phone calls and use of a gym.
