Affrontement à المنامة Manama – 6 janvier 2012

Bahrain rights activist beaten during protest

chicagotribune.com

Reuters January 6, 2012

DUBAI, Jan 6 (Reuters) – Bahraini security forces beat a prominent human rights activist during a confrontation after a protest march on Friday, opposition activists said.

They said several security officers threw Nabeel Rajab to the ground and beat him on the head, neck and back. He was taken to hospital with injuries but it was not immediately clear whether he had been detained, a lawyer who spoke to Rajab said.

Bahrain’s Interior Ministry immediately denied those accounts, saying on its Twitter feed that police found Rajab, head of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, « lying on the ground » and took him to hospital for treatment.

It earlier warned the protest march, organised by the Sunni-led kingdom’s largest opposition grouping, was illegal and said « legal procedures will be taken against violators ».

The incident capped one of the confrontations between security forces and demonstrators that occur daily in Bahrain, which hosts the U.S. Fifth Fleet and was the site of a sweeping crackdown on anti-government protests last year.

The protests swept Bahrain last February, led by members of the Shi’ite majority demanding the power of the ruling family be curbed and an end to what they call systematic discrimination in access to land and state employment on sectarian grounds. Read more…