As of 6 November 2016, Sayed Alawi Hussain Alawi has been forcibly disappeared for two weeks following his arrest at the hands of Bahraini security forces. The Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) condemns the ongoing practice of enforced disappearance of detainees in Bahrain.
Sayed Alawi Hussain Alawi, 43 years old, a resident of Duraz, disappeared on 24 October 2016, around 4pm. His family told BCHR that they received the last call from him at around 3pm when he told them he was going to be late due to his workload. However, they were not able to reach him on the phone later as his phone had been switched off. He didn’t return home, and his family searched for him at hospitals without luck, then filed a missing person report at the Budaiya police station. Later that day, the police station called the family to inform them that Alawi was being detained at the Criminal Investigation Directorate (CID), and asked the family to cancel the missing report.
On 25 October, Alawi’s family filed a complaint with the Ombudsman for arbitrary and illegal arrest, as no arrest warrant was ever seen.
Since then, the family has asked about Alawi at the CID several times without receiving any information about him from CID officers, who refused to confirm or deny having Alawi in detention. On 1 November, a CID officer only agreed to receive some clothes for Alawi. On 3 November, Alawi’s wife was called to come to CID and retrieve the clothes of her husband and to take them to Dry Dock Detention Center. When she went to receive the clothing, the officers refused to give it to her initially. To add to the family troubles, when they went to the Dry Dock Detention Center with the clothes, the officer of the prison informed them that Alawi was not there either.
Since his disappearance, Alawi has not called his family once. He has no access to a lawyer or to any family members. His lawyer has continued to ask about him at the public prosecution which being provided any information.
The act of enforced disappearance directly violates many basic human rights, including the right to liberty, right to security and dignity, right to recognition before the law, right to fair trial, and the right not to be subjected to torture or other cruel and inhumane treatment.
BCHR continues to document such cases of enforced disappearance on a regular basis. Bahrain continuously appears in the annual reports of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) since 2011 and has been criticized in WGEID’s 108th session document for providing merely “insufficient” information regarding the clarification of the urgent cases of two men allegedly arrested by state agents in September and November 2015.
Based on the above, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights calls on the government of Bahrain to:
- Immediately disclose the whereabouts of Sayed Alawi Hussain Alawi and release him;
- End the practice of enforced disappearance, including depriving arrested individuals of their right to a lawyer, or to contact their families.