During the period of local unrest throughout the nineties; allegation of torture and inhuman conditions at the detention facilities were the norm, pictures of the tortured detainees (some even to death) were out in public for everyone to see, stories of horror and long detailed tales of endless nights of the suffering and the distress of the innocent were recited at every gathering. But honestly speaking, that was the last of our worries back then.

Needless to say, all of this was forgotten and elapsed into oblivion, as the nation moved on with its cycle towards what we believed a “better tomorrow” back then, all the distress and trouble we lived for years we magically managed to forget.

But who is it to blame really. The timing couldn’t have been better, just when everyone had enough and things got complicated to an extent that you can literally sense the tension in the air was when a royal decree was issued pardoning everyone and anything, marking those tales and black untouchable files that are beyond our jurisdiction.

The pictures of the tortured laid somewhere in the back of my mind, the scandalous images of AbuGhraib soon jogged my, shortly followed by the youtube clips of torture within the police departments in Egypt. I guess we are used to those things as Arabs, as no arab state is torture free as they say, Bahrain today isn’t any better.

Ali Saeed Al Khabbaz, 22, from Sanabis has been taken three times to hospital since he was arrested two days ago. Concern has been raised about his physical health after his family was denied access to see him.

He is now at the military hospital and reports about his health from those who accidentally saw him this morning described his health as poor.

[…]

Another citizen, Hamid Yousif, in his mid-thirties, is also suffering extensive injuries to his body. He was tortured extensively at the hands of the death squads who attacked the peaceful demonstration in Sanabis on Sunday. (Bahrain Freedom Movement)

More, reported by Amnesty International Report of 2007 on Bahrain (Full Report):

In August, 19 detainees, most of whom were being held at the Dry-Dock prison on the Island of Muharraq, were beaten by riot police after a court session, apparently after they announced their intention to go on a hunger strike. They were protesting against their detention without bail and repeated postponements of the court sessions. The 19 detainees were arrested allegedly for holding an illegal gathering and sabotaging property in the town of Sanabis. After they appeared before the High Criminal Court, they were reportedly taken outside the prison grounds, their hands tied behind their backs, and forced to lie face-down in the heat of the sun for more than two hours, during which time they were allegedly beaten with sticks and kicked. The men were released in September after a pardon from the King. However, no investigation into their alleged ill-treatment was known to have been carried out.

We don’t need Article 19 of the “The Bahrain Constitution – 2002″ to state that “No person shall be subjected to physical or mental torture, or inducement, or undignified treatment”! It’s common bloody sense that detainees are entitled to humane treatment; nobody has the right to disturb a hair on their heads. Their confinement has but a single purpose, to keep them off the street until proven guilty in a court of law.

Now, I agree that those assailants who hurled Molotov cocktails attacking a police patrol car in Nuwaidrat last Monday (Full Story) are a bunch of terrorists that deserve to spend the rest of their life roasting on a spit over an open fire. But we are not supposed to do that because we shouldn’t descent to their level, because unlike them we are supposedly civilized! And know that terrorists are not entitled to human treatment; we are supposed to give to them, and when we fail to do that as has occurred in several confrontation fronts and the incidents reported above during the curb on local terror, we are dully disgraced.