Bahrain police detain, beat rights activist

The Bahrain Center for Human Rights said Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, who formerly worked for international human rights organisations, was detained today in a pre-dawn raid. Al-Khawaja's daughter, Zainab, confirmed the arrest and said her father was taken from her house in a Shiite village outside the capital, Manama.

She told The Associated Press that armed and masked men, some wearing black police uniforms and carrying riot gear, stormed her house around 2 am. They beat her father unconscious before taking him into custody along with her husband and her brother-in-law, she added.

"They were not just slapping him around, they were beating him badly like they wanted to hurt him," Zainab al-Khawaja said on the phone. She said one agent was holding her father by the neck and at least four were beating him severely and kicking him as they were dragging him down a flight of stairs.

"They kept saying to him 'We will kill you' and I begged them to not beat him because he is willing to go with them peacefully," the activist's daughter said. "I heard my father gasping for air, saying he cannot breathe, but they just kept hitting him until he passed out."

Al-Khawaja, 50, is a former Middle East and North Africa director of Frontline Defenders rights organisation. He also documented human rights abuses in Bahrain for Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

His daughter said he stopped working for international organisations last year because of harassment by the authorities.

Al-Khawaja's son-in-law, Mohammed al-Maskati, who also is an activist, was in the house during today's raid. He said armed men in black uniforms bound him with plastic handcuffs and forced him to lie on the ground face-down while agents beat him. One man kept a foot on his neck, he said.

"They kept saying, 'What's your name, donkey?' and hit me in the head," al-Maskati told the AP. "They cuffed me so tightly that they could not untie me and left deep wounds in hands," he said, adding that he was too afraid to seek medical treatment for his injuries.
"The hospitals are under control of the military," said al-Maskati, who heads the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights organisation.

On Thursday, Doctors Without Borders said Bahraini authorities turned hospitals into "places to be feared" during a deadly crackdown on anti-government protesters demanding greater political freedoms and equal rights for Shiites.